


Hourglass

by JaneDavitt



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 18:51:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 67,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19818391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneDavitt/pseuds/JaneDavitt
Summary: When Ben Adler gives in and grants his young daughter's wish, making a movie out of a TV show he used to produce, he knows he's going to have big problems. One of the leads from the original is a big star now, but the other's vanished into obscurity, leading a life far from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.Ben can also still remember how the actors' scorching off-screen romance went up in flames. Undeterred, Ben goes forward with the project, recruiting Ash and Lee by dangling very attractive carrots before them.The cameras start to roll, but the main action takes place off set. It's never easy to work with an old flame, or to handle the emotions that are bound to surface, but as two men who could never get enough of each other deal with a rekindled attraction, they discover that when it comes to love, there's always time for a retake.





	Hourglass

Hourglass

by Jane Davitt

Dedicated to my daughters, Eleanor and Lauren, who share Samantha's regret that their favorite shows have to end.

_FADE IN_

  1. _EXT. SNOWY WILDERNESS: DUSK_



_A man is struggling through the snow, too lightly dressed for the weather, clearly at the end of his endurance. We hear the rasp of his breath and see him stagger and fall, but get back to his feet. He keeps moving, heading for the setting sun. When it disappears, he knows that he's lost. Dead. It drops beneath the horizon and we see his face register his fate as he falls again._

_[PAUSE]_

_A glimmer of light appears through the falling snow, and the man raises his head. New purpose fills him, and we see him stand and head for the light._

  1. _EXT. A cave opening, golden light pouring from it._



_The man is staggering again now, reserves exhausted. He stumbles inside the cave and collapses onto the stony ground. The light becomes blinding. [FADE]_

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter One

Hangovers were hell, Ben Adler decided fuzzily, not for the first time that month, or even that week. His body protested the excesses of the night before with as much force as his third wife had used when faced with the words _no, it costs too much_. Had he been too drunk to bring a glass of water to bed? Because if ever a man needed hydration, it was him right now.

What the fuck had he been thinking of, drinking those frou-frou cocktails loaded with God knew what? And he remembered champagne as well, two, maybe three bottles brought to the table. That overpriced piss-with-bubbles never suited him. Should've stayed with bourbon.

There _was_ a glass of water beside the bed. Halle-fucking-lujah. It held an inch of water. Not so good. Ben dimly recalled reaching for the glass in the middle of the night and gulping thirstily. An inch would do. He drained it, and let it fall. It hit the carpeted floor but didn't break. Pity; he could've used a shard to slit his wrists and end his pain.

Shit, shit, shit.

He moaned piteously for help from someone, anyone, but he'd gone to bed alone and virtue wasn't its own reward today. If he'd had a wannabe star between the sheets, she could've wiggled her toned, tanned ass in the direction of a faucet and been useful for the first time in her life.

Ben swallowed through the thick, sticky dryness surrounding his swollen tongue—how could it be sticky _and_ dry? Didn't seem fair—and fantasized about water, clear, cool, life-giving water. Pints of it. Gallons. Waterfalls, rushing down to soothe the headache threatening to make his sandy, hot eyeballs explode, an image that made his uneasy stomach roil.

Great. Now he wanted to take a fucking leak. He stood, but the room spun wildly and the contents of his stomach attempted to revisit the outside world through the wrong orifice. Ben lay back down. He'd had this room redone recently. No way was he puking over 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets or wall-to-wall carpet in ivory wool.

The bedroom door opened, and Ben turned his head a fraction of an inch. "Don't turn on the—" His scream as a switch was flicked, flooding the room with an intense, nova-like burst of light, emerged as a strangled whoop, but the sadist sighed impatiently and turned off the light.

"Daddy, are you drunk _again_?"

"Not drunk," Ben whispered to the one person in the world he loved without reservation besides himself even if she had blinded him. "Hungover. That comes after being drunk, sweetie."

"According to statistics, many motorists going to work in the morning are still legally drunk," Samantha told him, with a quiver of sadness in her voice for the misguided souls.

For an eleven-year-old, she knew a lot Ben wished she didn't.

"Sweetie, I need water. Aspirin. More water. Be a doll and bring me some, huh?"

"Of course, Daddy." Samantha sat on the bed, setting off a series of explosions behind Ben’s eyes as the mattress undulated. "But I'm bored."

"And when I'm not dying, I'll care."

He did care. He felt guilt, a flicker of it, far back behind the misery of his churning gut and pounding head. He saw her every other weekend, Friday night to Sunday afternoon, and most of the time, she ended up stuck in a dim studio being quiet, or at parties he knew damn well weren't appropriate for her. Samantha wasn't a brat—God, some of the kids out there were demon spawn, plain and simple—but she was old for her age, a weary tolerance for adult frailties lurking behind her brown eyes.

"Do your homework."

"I finished that in the car over on Friday night," she said patiently. "There wasn't much. Ms. Hendricks says too much home study time isn't good for us. It over-taxes our brains and doesn't allow us to develop as well-rounded individuals. She says—"

" _Water_ ," Ben pleaded, cutting short the secondhand lecture. The woman didn't want to mark the damned stuff, most likely, and who could blame her? "Baby, _please_."

She stood, tossed shining, pin-straight brown hair back over her shoulder, a move she'd learned from every wannabe actress and model out there, and disappeared. Groaning with every exhalation, Ben waited for her to return, held hostage by his vociferously complaining body. She wasn't long, but it still felt like an eternity before she placed a tray beside his bed.

"What _is_ that?" Ben blinked at a glass full of red gunk as he reached for the tall glass of water. He gulped it in greedy, noisy swallows. Bliss. Sheer bliss. It raced along the dusty highways of his brain, leaving them awash with watery goodness.

"Here's something for your head," Samantha said. Extra-strength Tylenol. Did he own anything in the painkiller line that wasn't extra-strength? "And that's a hangover cure. It's a tomato and banana slushy, with a splash of vodka."

"One more word and I'll throw up on your Hello Kitty socks," Ben warned her. "The water was great, though."

Samantha's lip wobbled. "I made it _specially_ , Daddy! The banana has potassium and—”

"You made it because you're a natural-born sadist like your old man. Save the tears, sugar-bun." Ben reached out and patted her arm. "I'm gonna catch a few winks and then we'll do something, uh, fun. Whatever you want, okay?"

"But what can I do _now_?"

_Good question._

"Anything you like."

"Can I invite someone over?"

Ben shuddered. "God, no. The noise your friends make? I'd die. I'd be dead. No." They squealed. Like pigs being slaughtered. They raced around in Samantha's room, directly over his office, and the ceiling quaked and shook. They listened to music loud, loud, loud.

Samantha sighed. " _Fine_. Then can I maybe watch some TV?"

Finally, something he could say yes to. The TV room was in the basement, state-of-the-art equipment, with rows of seats that mimicked a cinema layout, except the seats were ultra comfortable and came with footstools. Ben had fallen asleep in one of those chairs more than once, popcorn spilling from the bowl in his lap to the floor.

"Sure. Of course you can. Patty brought over some screener DVDs the other day and there's one in there from Pixar. Something about a telepathic dog with hiccups."

"Mm," she said without enthusiasm. Yeah, Ben had thought that concept pretty much sucked too. "Can't I watch something from The Wall, Daddy?"

Ben craved sleep, hydrated, restful sleep. The Wall… Most of it was off-limits, but she was sensible and she knew what would give her nightmares.

"Nothing off the top, uh, three shelves. Nothing with an R or above rating. Nothing with 'sorority' in the title. Nothing—"

" _Daddy_. I get it. I know."

She slipped out of the room before he could add more qualifiers.

It'd been a while since Ben had taken anything off the shelves holding everything he'd ever written, produced, directed, or appeared in. As a testament to his career, it was a motley one, showcasing the false starts he'd made before realizing his strength lay in controlling the people who did those jobs, but he knew the business inside out. Hell, he'd worked in craft service, dishing out complimentary food to people who depended on it to get them through the day, and stars too cheap to pay for their meals. If he visited a set, he'd cast an appraising eye on what was on offer, comparing it to his day, when greasy doughnuts and weak coffee had kept cast and crew going one eighteen-hour day after another. Now, the hours were set, the food was a lavish buffet featuring the latest freak food that had people buzzing—pomegranate granola muffins? What the fuck? — and he'd once counted seven varieties of bottled water on offer.

The top shelves on The Wall were porn, more porn, and then, for variety, slasher movies, which also contained porn, as well as gallons of blood and yards of viscera. He'd always known what the public went for and the critics hated. Even playing the third body hacked to pieces, with lines that were mostly all screamed or sobbed-out versions of “No! Please, God, no!” followed by a gurgle when his throat was ripped out.

His directing debut had been deemed a cult classic, though, which meant it'd sunk without a trace on release and taken a decade to become lauded as a “wistful, fragile love story, whimsical and heartbreaking, between a serial killer and his cat.” Too fucking late, assholes. He'd gone broke, disillusioned, and bitter into TV and made his first million that way, churning out slick, glossy comedies and grittily dark procedurals for the most part, hating every minute of it.

Every fucking minute, but he was too sleepy to dwell on those barren, soulless years before there wasn't a single restaurant in L.A. that didn't always have a table for him, from Spago to the Stinking Rose.

He shied away from contemplating a menu, and fell asleep between one disconnected thought and the next, waking four hours later with a drool-damp pillow.

Okay. He felt better. Fragile, but not broken. The overwhelming need to piss got him out of bed and staggering toward the bathroom. He'd found over the years that a full bladder was the best alarm clock. Once he was vertical and mobile, a shower, steamy hot, jets on full power, pummeled him the rest of the way awake. By the time he'd scrubbed the fur off his teeth and, my God, his tongue—was it supposed to be that sickly yellow? Gross, as Samantha would say—he was back to normal.

He dressed in Sunday comfort clothes, a pair of sweats, soft as kitten fur, and a baggy T-shirt, faded so that the logo on the front was all but indecipherable. It extolled the joys of weed and Ben was fairly sure Ms. Hendricks wouldn't approve of that message.

Time to find his baby girl and make nice. After coffee, of course. Coffee. Plain, ordinary coffee made in a machine he'd had for years. His kitchen was equipped with an espresso maker that had cost more than his first two cars, but he'd never used it. Didn't know how and didn't care to learn. The kitchen existed in a perpetual state of being prepared for anything and used for nothing, a sprinter poised on the starting line waiting for a starting pistol to fire.

Ben ambled into the kitchen and fed the coffeemaker water and Folgers before pressing a single button. That done, he hacked off a piece of two-day-old cake, sticky with glaze and rich with cinnamon, and ate it over the sink, staring out at his pool. February. Too cold to swim. Ben wasn't the hardy type, and he didn't have a body that could transcend goose bumps and still look good. At forty-five, he was balding, had a potbelly, and the hair on his chest was gray. The thermometer said it was 57F he'd stay dressed, thanks.

The house was quiet, his phone set to voice mail, as it always was when he was asleep. He was too big a name to disturb because someone else had a problem. The TV's chatter floated up from the basement. When the coffeemaker had produced enough to fill his favorite mug, a plain, glossy red, thick and heavy, he headed down the basement stairs, sipping as he went.

Two steps from the foot of the stairs, Samantha wailed, "Noooooo," her voice desolate, despairing. Ben lurched forward, instinctively responding to her distress, spilled coffee over his bare feet, and cursed dispassionately as the liquid soaked into a pearl-gray carpet. Scotch-Guarded his ass. That was never coming off.

"Sweetheart? You okay?" he called, shaking his feet irritably, one by one. Of course she was okay; why wouldn't she be okay? She'd probably spent the last four hours watching gore and porn because he was a shitty father, but hey, every other kid in her class seemed to be in therapy, so why not her?

"He was pushed off the roof," Samantha said, her face tragic. She hit Pause, freezing the action on a screen big enough to need a zip code. "He died. Oh, God, Daddy, tell me it works out, because I can't watch it if he stays dead."

Kids nowadays. They thought death could be erased and yeah, if the star was big enough and the fans loud enough, sometimes it could happen. _Dallas_ had done it on an epic scale with Bobby in the freaking shower for a year. It took balls of steel to write off an entire season as a dream. Ben was a believer in go big or go home. If he failed, and in this industry you could wake up a has-been after going to bed a sure thing, he'd do it in style.

"What're you watching?" Ben squinted at a frame with someone's back taking up most of the shot. Automatically, he admired the angle and the lighting, recognizing his own work, and then something about the tilt of the head triggered recognition.

Next to the TV was a tall stack of videotapes, the boxes big and clunky compared to a slim DVD case. They were official studio ones, not merchandise, so the covers were blank, but Ben's eyesight was still 20-20 and he could read the neat printing on the spines. Anger, disappointment, regret; the echoes of the emotions he'd felt ten years before when the show had ended rang in his ears, making his heart pound with a sickeningly fast beat.

_Hourglass_. His baby girl was watching _Hourglass_.

Well, fuck.

  1. _INT. CAVE—MUTED, GOLDEN LIGHT_



_Steve York stares down at his bare forearm, frowning, puzzled._

_YORK I don't—I don't understand. What is this?_

_[INSERT FX SHOT OF ARM WITH GOLDEN HOURGLASS TURNING SLOWLY, ENDLESSLY UNDER HIS SKIN]_

_ALURA It is your life, passing by. I know how many turns of the glass before your time runs out._

_YORK Fine, but what's with the tattoo, lady? I'm a businessman, not a biker._

_ALURA No one but you and the one destined to help you can see it._

_YORK Still not getting it. I mean, thanks for the clothes [gestures at the furs he's wearing] and the food, but I didn't ask for the extra helping of mystical on the side, you know?_

_ALURA [still calm] You have been brought here, not by chance but the path of fate, and that path crosses the lives of many others. You have the power to grant a wish. One each day, if you like. The wishes must serve that which is good; a selfish wish, a greedy one, will cost you dearly._

_YORK [with conviction] Lady, you're the one in need of help. Can I wish for you to get therapy?_

_ALURA [shrugs] If you like. If you are willing to pay the price for a foolish wish._

_YORK [still not getting it] I'm rich, but I'm not a billionaire, for God's sake. How much are we talking here?_

_ALURA A wish a day if you choose to use it—but a wish will cost you a day of your life—unless it is an unworthy one. The hourglass will empty every time you help someone who asks for your aid._

_YORK [skeptical, but worry in his eyes. He's seen too much in this cave to doubt her powers.] Then I guess I swear off wishes for the duration._

_ALURA No. That is not the man you are. Arrogant, brash—but you care for people more than most realize. You were meant for this work. I trust you to wield the power with wisdom._

_YORK [unwillingly intrigued] But say I do this, say I—how can I risk using a wish on someone with, I don't know, a broken leg, not knowing if someone who needs it more might come along before midnight? God, how would I choose who to save from a ward full of dying kids? I couldn't._

_ALURA Sunset to sunset. Not midnight. And you cannot heal the dying. Not yet. [smiles] Consider yourself in training. You will learn your limits soon enough. And you will know who to help through the visions you will receive._

_YORK [shaking head, giving up on making sense of it all] Visions? Whatever, lady. You're nuts, you know that? I'm not wishing my life away for a bunch of strangers no matter how pitiful their sob story is. I want to go home, so point me in the right direction, please. Hey! What are you—_

_ALURA raises her hand, and YORK disappears in a flash of golden light. ALURA staggers, and we pan to her bare arm, where an hourglass is spinning wildly, light blazing from it. She moans as if in pain, panting for breath, then smiles._

_Wish granted._

_[FADE]_

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Two

"Give it back to me!" Samantha tugged hard at the remote and wrested it from Ben's hands. He blamed his defeat on his sweaty hands and his hangover. No way was a little girl stronger than him. Maybe he'd brush the dust off some of the machines in his personal gym and work out, well, how to work out. Maybe.

She clutched the remote to her T-shirt-clad chest—more Hello Kitty—and gave him a death glare she'd inherited from her mother. Maddy had been Ben's third—and God willing, final—wife, and theirs had been a tempestuous relationship for the four years it'd lasted. Fun, though. Never boring. And it'd gotten him a daughter he loved more than life, but, Jesus, that glare was spooky. Maybe Maddy trained her during the week, doling out tips for driving Daddy crazy.

"I want to finish watching the episode!"

"It fades to black right about here," Ben told her. When it came to his shows, he had an eidetic memory. Shame the same didn't hold for his dates, but that was why he called them all “honey.” "Two-parter. You don't get to find out if what's-his-name dies until the next episode."

"Rob!"

"Rob, yeah." Ben rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Listen, precious, this show isn't something I want you watching, okay?"

She frowned. "Why not? No one swears and no one gets naked." A wistful look passed over her face. "Though there was that one scene when they get soaked to the skin by that truck that drives through the puddle and they go back to Steve's penthouse and Steve won't let Rob drip on the rugs, so he takes off his jeans, and then Steve takes off _his_ —"

"I remember," Ben said hastily before she could go into more details. Jesus, they grew up fast. There'd been a twenty-percent bump in fan mail after the guys had stripped down to whatever Costume had decided a rich asshole and a street kid would wear under their jeans. It'd been a nice morning until the actors had bitched about being nothing but beefcake—they'd used the words “artistic integrity,” which in Ben's experience usually meant that they were devoid of any—and then asked for a raise in salary. A raise that they hadn't gotten because Ben hired people who knew how to write contracts, thank you very much.

In that time slot? Better believe it'd all been Ivory-soap pure, not that it'd stopped the fans reading significance into every line and coming up with some wacky ideas about Steve and Rob's relationship.

"So _why_ can't I watch it?" Samantha said, a suspicion of a whine showing through. "It's old. They don't have computers! Not real ones. It's like a history lesson."

The fuck? A show set in the late nineties was costume drama?

"I know, I know, okay, but that show…" He gave her a helpless look. How did you explain to an eleven-year-old that some experiences left you scarred? Deeply, deeply scarred.

"I like it," she said, and wasn't that fucking peachy. His daughter, the one who could spot a dud two minutes past the credits, liked _Hourglass_. What was he going to tell her? Dialogue unspooled in his head, smooth and plausible.

_Look, sweetie, it was a cheesy fantasy show that only lasted for two seasons because we hired a couple of guys who looked good topless and we struck gold with the housewives and the gays, but they were never going to be the network's demographic choice of viewer and then that fuck of a leading man, that talentless hack Morden, jumped ship to be a movie star and left me drowning in debt and I'd like to take his Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar and insert it sideways into his—_

No. None of that would get past his gritted teeth. He'd always kept a tolerant, pleased-for-the-guy-and-his-big-break, yeah-sure-we're-still-good-buddies thing going on and he wouldn’t let the truth spew out over Samantha, who'd been in diapers when Ash fucking Morden had walked off set, that annoying grin front and center. What had Cosmopolitan called that grin when they’d interviewed Ash for their sexy older men (ha!) issue last year, not that Ben gave a shit? Oh, yeah. “Charmingly roguish and a real panty-dampener.”

Yeah, Ash leering at a girl was enough to make anyone piss themselves laughing given the number of men he'd fucked over the years.

"I'm glad you like it, sweetie, but it's, like, ten years old. More. Turn off the TV and how about you and me go have some fun, huh?"

"I want to finish watching it."

"You can't," Ben said flatly. "Two seasons. There were, uh, forty-two, maybe forty-three episodes and they're about fifty minutes long. You go home in a few hours, so do the math."

Fifty-minute episodes; that dated _Hourglass_ more than the primitive computers and cell phones that were too big for pockets— hell, most purses. Nowadays, an episode could come in at around forty minutes and no one blinked an eye.

"Then take me to a Best Buy so I can get the DVDs. I have my allowance saved up."

"It never came out on DVD."

Samantha's mouth pooched up, bewilderment replacing stubbornness. "Don't be silly, Daddy. _Every_ thing comes out on DVD. _Gilligan's Island_ is on DVD. _Bewitched_ is on—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, okay." He was saying that often recently, and it sounded more of a lie each time. He didn't know. Didn't know where he was going with his life, didn't know why his baby girl was obsessed with a long-dead show about a man making wishes and slowly whittling his life away—who _did_ that? Seriously, who would? Steve York was a fucking idiot. "They are. _Hourglass_ isn't."

"Why?"

Simple question, with a simple answer. He owned the rights, he didn't need the money, not that there'd be much, and he was damned if Ash Morden was getting a penny in royalties.

"Not commercially viable, sweetie. It had a small fan-base and they've probably forgotten all about it now."

"So who owns the rights?" Samantha asked, cutting to the heart of the matter with an incisive flick of her hair. "You can make them release it, Daddy. They'd do it for _you_."

"Well, as it happens…"

"You do? _You_ own them?" Samantha managed to convey jumping up and down, clapping her hands cutely, without moving. "That makes it so easy!"

"No," Ben said firmly. "I'm not releasing a DVD because you watched a couple episodes of a show that's dead and buried. Forget it."

"Then let me borrow the videos," she said, her eyes flint-hard.

"Do you own a VCR?" Ben asked, fairly sure of the answer. Maddy threw out the old and embraced the new with religious fervor. He'd once asked her why she hadn't tried to trade a five-year-old Samantha in for a baby and gotten a slap that had rocked him back on his heels.

"Nooooo…"

"And you know I don't let anything on The Wall leave the house." Ben bit at his lip and tried not to let Sam's woebegone expression affect him. "Okay, I'll tell you what. Because I love you, because I'm weak and a shitty father, like that's news, I'll get someone in the office to come here and copy them to DVD for you. It'll take them hours, but what the hell; they don't do anything useful anyways. How about that? Your own, one-of-a-kind set of _Hourglass_ DVDs."

"Will I get them by tomorrow?" she asked, her eyes narrowed.

"They'll start work on it tomorrow," Ben said, not committing himself. "I'll send the DVDs over to your mom's house when they're done, okay?"

Samantha took a deep breath. "I love you, Daddy."

"Yeah, yeah," Ben said gruffly. She meant it; that was what always got to him. "Now turn that damn TV off and let's go out, huh? Daddy needs some fresh air."

And a drink. He so needed a drink.

  1. _EXT. CITY STREET - NIGHT_



_YORK, walking, feels something tug at his pocket, whirls around and grabs a young man's wrist._

_PICKPOCKET Hey!_

_YORK Save it for the cops, kid._

_PICKPOCKET Yeah, I like a receptive audience for my stories, thanks. Look, I knocked into you, okay? And I might've inhaled some air molecules you wanted; is that a crime?_

_YORK No, but lifting my car keys and wallet might qualify. [holds out free hand] Give it up._

_PICKPOCKET [sulking as he returns York's property] Fine. [under breath] Asshole._

_YORK I'm not the one stealing. I'd say that puts you at the top of the list when it comes to being an asshole._

_PICKPOCKET Listen, this isn't a career choice, okay? A guy's got to eat and I'm hungry—[he tries to twist free and YORK grabs him with both hands, his rolled-up shirtsleeves riding higher. The pickpocket's eyes widen] God, where did you get that ink? That is seriously cool._

_YORK [shaken] You—you can see it?_

_They both stare at the turning hourglass under YORK's skin, and then their gazes lock. Connection time._

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Three

"So she mainlines the whole fucking show in a week, homework abandoned, her mother's screaming down the phone at me like it's my fault, and then it turns out she's copied the DVDs and gotten her friends hooked on it too." Ben shook his head and stabbed his fork into a piece of wilted lettuce. When he was a kid, you threw the rabbit food out when it went limp; now he was paying extra to eat it. Go figure. The restaurant was packed, every table taken, but that didn't mean anything. Ben never ate anywhere that wasn't, like he never waited in line. All about the image, always.

" _Hourglass?_ " Larry said incredulously. "Ben, that piece of shit isn't old enough to be retro and it was never a cult. I don't get it."

"That's why you're an accountant, Foster," Ben said. "Leave it to the eleven-year-old girls to know a good thing when they see it."

Larry raised his eyebrows. "Tell me that's a joke and I won't charge you when I laugh politely."

Ben snorted and took a sip of imported water that cost more for a glass than a bottle of wine in some places. What the fuck was so special about water from Fiji? He'd known Larry for decades, long enough that jokes about what would and wouldn't appear on his bill weren't funny anymore. "It's a joke, but it's on me. She nagged me for forty-eight hours straight about making a movie. Said they'd done it for _Starsky and Hutch_ , _Charlie's Angels_ , _The Dukes of Hazzard_ …"

"Please. I'm eating."

"I know, I know."

Larry chewed perfunctorily on a chunk of steak and then swallowed. Before the meal was over, he'd be popping antacids. "So who does she see in the main roles? Who's hot?"

"She doesn't want a remake," Ben said, regretting the chance to recast. Not that he wanted to make the fucking movie. "That might be possible. She's right, there's a shitload of nostalgia out there—"

"Either that or the writers have run out of ideas," Larry interjected.

"Bite your tongue. Anyway, she wants the original cast."

Larry frowned. "Are they alive? Well, I know Morden is…"

"Jesus, Larry, it wasn't that long ago, and they were younger than you. Yeah, they're alive. Some of them. Anita Carris died."

"I heard about that." Larry was silent for a moment, as a sign of respect, Ben assumed. "Drugs, right?"

" _No_ ," Ben snapped, unreasonably annoyed. Anita had been nice. Classy. He'd respected that and never made a move on her. Not his type, anyway. "God, Larry, she had cancer, okay? I sent flowers." He reconsidered. "At least, I meant to. Maybe I did." He waved his hand impatiently. "It doesn't matter. She's gone, so we'd have to recast the grumpy neighbor for a start."

"Hell, you'd have to recast them all," Larry said, a frown doing its best to put lines in a Botoxed forehead. "I only caught a few episodes, but wasn't that the one where the two guys kept taking their shirts off? Who's gonna want to see them do that now?"

"Sam thinks it'd be cool to see them ten years later. Pick up the story, reunite them after they went their separate ways in the final episode, work in some angst because they don't know how long York's got left after all those fucking wishes… Oh, she's full of ideas."

Larry shrugged. "Good for her. I'm not seeing the problem."

"She's driving me _crazy_."

"Keep smiling and by this time next week, she'll be into something else."

Ben sighed. "Any other kid, I'd agree. Sam’s a force of nature when she's like this."

"You spoil her," Larry said.

Ben eyed him sourly. "Still drinking from the 'best uncle in the world' mug she gave you, Uncle Larry?"

Larry and his wife, Janet, weren't related to Samantha, but they were still family. Janet had gone to high school with Maddy, and after the divorce she and Larry had refused to choose any side but Sam's, sweeping in and taking her off for weekends when a depressed Maddy was drinking too much. They'd filled their sprawling house with children Sam's age for her to play with, borrowed from their friends and family.

Larry had the grace to look abashed, but he soon rallied. "Okay, so we spoil her too. She's a great kid; God knows how she managed it with you for a father, but she is. It doesn't mean I'd give her the moon if she asked for it, and you can't give her this. It's impossible."

Impossible was a word Ben had expunged from his personal dictionary. Nothing was impossible given enough desire to make it happen and a shitload of money. Samantha had the first, and he had the last. It could work.

"Look, I'm not saying I want to do this movie—I don't—but if I did, are you telling me that I couldn't pull it off? _Me?_ I'm insulted."

"You need a tax write-off or next April's gonna hurt," Larry said thoughtfully. "Let me think about it."

"I can't write off a movie, Larry! Shit, it's like throwing chum in the water. The sharks will be circling before the first scene's shot." Ben shuddered, picturing the headlines.

"This movie's gonna tank," Larry said with unflattering certainty. "Direct-to-DVD, yeah? You won't break even."

"It's your job to tell me how to do it," Ben pointed out, an edge to his voice.

Larry shrugged. "You want that? Fine. You don't want to spend millions on it, and it was never all about the big booms and the car chases so you probably won't need to. Keep it small. Under the radar. Play up Sam's part in all this and cast yourself in the doting daddy role. Say it's a birthday present to your little girl. Donate a chunk of whatever it makes to one of those charities that grant wishes for dying kids. Get Sam's school friends to adopt a puppy and call it Hourglass. There was a dog on the show, right?"

"No, there fucking wasn't," Ben said warmly. "It was a shitty piece of crap, but it didn't have a single fucking animal on it, if you don't count Lee Simons when someone ate his fucking jelly beans. He had a bowl of them, yellow, green, and black. Lemon, lime, licorice. Touch them and he went ape. That guy was nuts." Ben picked up a curl of carrot, gave it a brooding stare, and bit it, contemplating Morden's co-star's explosive temper. No crunch. Why didn't people cut carrots into coins anymore? That was how his mom did it. "You know how on the show he's this street punk with an attitude?"

"No, because I never watched it." Larry coughed and smoothed his hand across the table, clearing away a crumb or two. "Well, I may have caught ten minutes here and there on reruns."

"Sure, sure," Ben said magnanimously. "Not your thing. I get it. Well, see, he played Rob, uh, Dolan, yeah, that was it. And the kid's snarky and a thief, but he's like York's Jiminy Cricket, his conscience. And Simons was _good_ at it. He could pull off all the sappy lines the writers puked up and make it work. Butter wouldn't melt, these big brown eyes…cute as hell if you like them pretty and feisty. His cheekbones used to get more fan mail than he did."

Larry took a small sip of water and burped gently. "So what's your point?"

"The kid had a mouth on him," Ben said, remembering some of Lee's verbal attacks with a wince. No star ego like that asshole Morden, but Lee could leave a trail of destruction behind him. For all that, though, Ben had liked him. Most of the time. "He did a take once, goofing off, reading the lines with all these extra bits like it was him saying them, not the character, totally sending up York's motives for getting this good-looking street kid to move into his penthouse. Wasted a couple hundred dollars’ worth of film, but I pissed my pants laughing."

"Still got it?" Larry asked, his face brightening. "Might be good for a blooper reel extra on the DVD. Not that I think there should be one."

Ben snorted. "Are you fucking kidding me? I'm not talking about swearing, though he did plenty of that. No, it was this way he had of needling you, finding every weak spot. It wouldn't need beeping, but it sure as hell wouldn't go down well. Fans are funny. Give them a couple of guys hugging or a fluffed line and a pratfall and they're snickering like kids, but let them see the actors like they are and they don't like it. Blooper tapes are sanitized the hell and back. Hell, sometimes they're scripted."

"You're destroying all my illusions." Larry frowned. "So what did Simons do after the show?"

"Nothing," Ben said succinctly. "Took his paycheck and disappeared."

"Oh, come on," Larry protested. "He must've done something. Actors never retire. Ever. It's in their contract."

"Nothing," Ben repeated. "Not a soap, or a game show, not even an infomercial."

"So if you make this movie for Sam—and I'm advising you against it as your accountant and your friend, so we're clear on that when it tanks and you're looking for someone to blame—how the hell are you going to get either of them back?" Larry asked. "Morden's too big, Simons is in the wind…"

"I'm doing the movie," Ben said flatly, his mind made up. Morden was big, riding high these days? So fucking what? So was he, and his balls were bigger. He'd seen Morden changing after a scene shot in a swimming pool, so he knew that for a fact. "I'll get them back, both of them."

Larry lifted his hand to signal their waiter to bring the check. "A hundred says you don't."

"Done," Ben said and sat back and let Larry pay for lunch.

_The set of the new hit show_ Hourglass _is a busy hive of activity, but the two stars of the show, Ash Morden, known to viewers as the idealistic young lawyer on the popular drama_ Crimes of Passion _, and Lee Simons, in his first major role, kindly agreed to be interviewed for_ Star Chat _during a break in filming the season one finale—and no, I'm not giving away any spoilers, folks._

_I asked handsome blond Ash how it felt to be the star after so many supporting roles, and he looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes. (And yes, ladies, they're as blue as they look on screen!)_

_"Patty, every role, every character I play, is a star in their minds, the star of the show that is their life. I try to portray that."_

_"So what you're saying is that you don't mind how big or small the role is, because you can still make it your own?"_

_He smiled at me, and I'll admit my heart skipped a beat. His character, Steve York, is a rich businessman with a playboy streak who gets a social conscience—and a new girl every week—and it's no secret that Morden is a ladies' man himself, seen in all the right places with a string of models and movie stars. "That's exactly it, Patty."_

_I turned to the young man fans are swooning over and asked this rising star how being discovered by Ben Adler has changed his life. Pushing back his riot of curly hair (it's rumored those brown locks have a section in his contract) he looks at me with eyes two shades lighter than the hair and smiles. It's like being hit by a searchlight._

_"Ever won the lottery?"_

_I tell him that if I had, I wouldn't be here talking to them, I'd be on a beach in Hawaii, and they laugh, exchanging warmly friendly glances, an easy camaraderie already evident between them._

_[Extract from_ Star Chat _April 1999 issue]_

Chapter Four

Ash adjusted his swim shorts and dived into his pool, the heated water pleasant against his skin. He liked swimming and tried to fit in a solid thirty minutes a day doing a splashy version of freestyle. His agent routinely sent him to castings for characters in their late twenties and that meant keeping his thirty-eight-year-old body in shape. It gave him time to think, but that wasn’t always a bonus. Regrets and missed opportunities floated past more often than he liked.

No one was supposed to interrupt him when he was in the pool, so the appearance of a man on the patio sent a spike of annoyance through him. He rolled to his back and squinted against the sunlight. Not his agent, not his bodyguard… Recognizing Ben Adler had him inhaling water as he stopped floating and sank briefly under the water. By the time he'd surfaced, spluttering and coughing, and hauled himself out of the pool, his uninvited visitor had helped himself to a beer from the poolside bar. With a nod, Adler ambled over to a pair of loungers set under huge umbrellas and took a seat, making himself at home.

Arrogant as ever.

Ash picked up his towel from the table between the two loungers and blotted his face dry. The towel blocked his view of Adler, allowing him time to regain his composure. Always aware of his appearance, he absently noted the pull of tight skin across his cheekbones. Facial time. His face was untouched by scalpel or needle, but it required that little bit of extra help here and there. His hair was the rich gold it'd always been—mostly, anyhow. Confident Ben’s appraising look wouldn’t discover a flaw, he slung the towel around his shoulders and met Adler's smile with a question, not a greeting. "Who let you in?"

Adler sipped his beer and grimaced after swallowing as if the chilled bottle were filled with warm piss or something. Asshole. "Budweiser? Still trying to pretend you're one of the guys, huh?"

"I like it." Ash tried to keep the defensive note out of his voice and failed. Reminding himself he was a star didn't work. He had an Oscar, sure, but Ben Adler had power and the will to use it. The guy scared the shit out of Ash, always had.

"You never did have any taste." Adler set the bottle down on the patio—marble tiles, slippery as hell, but classy—with a clink. "Your housekeeper let me in. Why not? Am I on a do-not-admit list? Persona non grata?"

"No, of course not," Ash said hastily. "But, Jesus, Ben, you haven't spoken to me for ten years." He didn't count the insincere platitudes they mouthed at award shows when there was a camera on them or a microphone pointed their way. They bumped into each other at private parties now and then too. It was inevitable. Big city, small number of stars. In the early days Ben had been viciously vocal, especially if he was drunk, but these days they ignored each other. It was easy to swing around and start a conversation with the nearest warm body to avoid Ben’s hostile gaze when Ben wasn’t interested in a public fight either. "You can't blame me for being surprised when you show up at my house uninvited."

"If I'd called ahead, would you have agreed to see me?"

Ash picked up Ben's beer and took it back to the bar for someone to clear away later. No sense leaving it there to get kicked over. Without asking what Ben wanted to drink—he doubted Ben's preferences had changed—or answering the question, he mixed them both a simple scotch on the rocks and made them doubles. He'd drunk half of his before he reached the loungers. The burn of the spirit, undiluted yet, jarred him out of surprise and into wariness.

"I might have wanted my lawyer included in the party."

"No lawyers, not yet, anyway." Ben accepted his drink and took a healthy gulp, the ice clinking gently. "I should have gone to your agent first, but I—"

"My _agent_?" Ash interrupted, incredulity blossoming. "This is about a job?"

Ben studied his fingernails, as perfectly manicured as Ash's, then shoved a finger into his mouth. He worried the nail with his teeth, then spat out a bitten-off shred. Charming. "Could be. Why, are you interested in working for me again?"

For. Not with. Ash noted that point with a sour twist to his mouth. Only one king of any hill Ben Adler stood on, and it was him. He was that rarity, a producer who never bothered to sweet-talk his actors. They were privileged to work for him, not the other way around. That he'd gotten Hollywood to buy that particular line of bullshit was amazing.

"When I left _Egg Timer_ , you said I'd never work for you again, unless you needed someone to clean a toilet, and even then I’d have to beg."

The in-joke of the show's name fell easily from his mouth, the years dropping away. God, it'd been fun on that show. He'd said that to every reporter who'd asked, and for the only time in his career, it'd been the God's honest truth. Ben had been a sadistic son of a bitch, working them all until they dropped, sixteen-hour days, six, sometimes seven days a week, and to hell with the unions, but he'd been right there with them, working his ass off too, sweat dripping off him under the lights, his eyes reddened and bleary, but never missing the smallest detail. And he was _good_. Ash knew his limitations, and he'd never been tempted to step to the other side of the cameras and direct, produce, or write the way some actors did, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate creative genius when he saw it. Ben had it in spades.

Ben shrugged. "I was pissed at you. Still am. Always will be. Deal."

"I'm sorry about how it ended on the show," Ash said, words that came more easily to his lips than to Ben's from what he recalled. "The movie was a big break for me, and we all knew the show wouldn’t be renewed."

Ben shot him a bleak stare. "Not when the star had walked out, no."

"It was dead in the water before that." Ash had never understood why Ben had taken him leaving so hard. "Joe told me the network had pulled the plug."

"Joe's a good agent and a better liar," Ben said. "I had a renewal deal all sewn up, another season in the bag. I had Lee under contract and I needed you to sign to make it work. What do I get? _Variety_ calling me to tell me you're making movies with the cool kids and did I have a statement to make."

It might have been true. From things Joe had let slip when he was drunk over the years, it probably was, but Ash didn't allow guilt to surface.

"It worked out fine for everyone. I got an Oscar and you… Well, look at you." Ash waved his hand in a vague, encompassing gesture at Ben's expensive suit and shoes, the gloss only serious money could place on a paunchy man in his mid-forties with thinning hair and tired eyes. Ben was seven years older than Ash, but no one would ever guess that from looking at them. Seventeen, maybe. "You're big, Ben. You made it too."

"Happy endings all around." Ben raised his glass in a toast. "Here's to stardom, fame, and success. You've done well, kid. I hate you, but I'm proud of you deep down. Way far down."

"Uh, yeah." Ash took a cautious sip. He needed to be sober for this. Kid? Only Ben. "Thanks."

This was freaky. Ben had never been this nice to him, not even when Ash had missed his brother's wedding to finish work on an episode that Ben had hoped—in vain—would get them an Emmy. Was never going to happen. _Hourglass_ hadn't been that kind of show. And his mom still brought it up at every family gathering, though Jack and Sonia had split up six months after tying the knot.

"So I thought, you know what? Let bygones be bygones." Ben smiled, all teeth, a lazy, predatory smile. Ash shivered from more than the breeze that had sprung up, cool on his damp skin. He'd heard stories about Ben in this mood. Careers broken, desperate-for-work actors and writers ending up out of the business, God, in _retail_ even. "I've got a new project lined up, nothing much of anything, but hey, it could be fun to work together again, right? What's going on with you now?"

"I'm busy," Ash said automatically. No actor ever admitted to being anything but in demand. "I finished voice work on a cartoon this week, playing the, ah, the hero." Who was a carrot with a morbid fear of heights, trying to make his way down a mountain, avoiding a hungry goat, but it was still the lead.

"Disney? Pixar?"

"Independent company. You wouldn't have heard of them. They're gonna be big."

"Then I would've heard of them," Ben said.

True. Annoying but true.

Ash swallowed the last of his drink, forgetting his resolve to stay sober. He’d skipped lunch, and the effect of the double shot was kicking in. "Yeah, well, that wrapped and Joe's got some deals lined up that he's excited about. There's this pilot about a teacher who wins the lottery—"

"You've got nothing," Ben said quietly. "You're riding your reputation, but that won't last forever. You're at that awkward age, too old to play the son, too young to play the father."

"You forgot the love interest." When it came to his body, he wasn't vain but objectively appreciative. Wide shoulders, long legs, and muscles that made going shirtless a breeze, not something requiring weeks of bulking up. He still had it and he knew it.

"Yeah," Ben said. "You were always good at creating chemistry."

Ash shrugged modestly.

"Shame most of it was with your co-star," Ben continued, bringing heat to Ash's face. He’d always wondered how much Ben knew about his affair with Lee and never wanted to ask. "Though that bromance shit is hot right now so maybe you two lovebirds were ahead of the curve. Ever see Lee around?"

Ash had told himself one drink was enough when it was only three in the afternoon, but that question brought him to his feet and heading for the bar.

Lee. Had he seen him? No. Had he forgotten him? Same answer. Ash poured a drink that made the previous one look stingy and took his glass and the bottle back to his seat. He put the bottle on the table. If Ben wanted more, he could help himself. Ash was damned if he would play the polite host to a man who'd turned a good day into a bad one.

"Cut the reminiscing and tell me what you want, Ben."

Ben picked up his glass and stirred the melting ice with his finger before sucking it clean. Ash watched the finger slide into Ben's mouth with a lurch of lust that had nothing to do with Ben, who was straight in an uncomplicated, relaxed way. Ash didn't think he had gaydar, but he knew when someone was interested in him and sending out a signal. He got nothing but static from Ben, white noise. He'd never admitted to being gay to Ben, but he'd never thought that he needed to. Ben knew, Ash had been certain of it. He didn't care as long as Ash kept his preferences quiet.

That finger sucking, though, that'd been one of Lee's tricks, something he'd decided his character would do. It had led to Ash enduring scene after scene with his dick half-hard and nothing on his mind but what he'd do to Lee after the scene wrapped. It wasn't easy for the two stars to disappear, but running lines in the trailer they shared was a safe excuse to go somewhere quiet and close the door. Lee would get him so worked up that the sex was over in minutes, leaving them time to make the excuse a truthful one. Hell, the sex was always a rushed, intense high back then. The first time Ash saw Lee completely naked, feeling that hard, hot body against his, skin on skin, had made him shoot. Lee had laughed when Ash apologized, and said he was flattered.

They'd gotten a day or two off a week if they were lucky and they couldn't spend it all in bed or together because people would notice; people would talk.

Sometimes, they hadn't wanted to. Ben would release them for a weekend if they were on schedule, a day if they weren't, and they'd go their separate ways, Ash sleeping for long enough to take the burn from his eyes and the tremors from his hands, then going out to party, Lee doing much the same. Their paths would cross now and then at a party, at a club, and then more of the same in a car, an alley, a bathroom stall.

Risky, reckless, addictive sex until Ash had gotten hooked on it, needing to be with Lee, and hating himself for his weakness. Every glimpse of that near-black curly hair, those snapping, sparkling brown eyes, that lush, wanton pout of dark red lips had been a reminder of how stupid Ash was being, trading his career for blow jobs and a hot, tight ass to fuck or the dark thrill of bending over and feeling Lee's fingers slide and grind inside him, followed by a cock that split him open, left him boneless, sated, smiling.

Lee played a pickpocket on the show, a thief with a heart of gold, stealing to feed the younger sister Steve York's first wish failed to save because she was too far gone with whatever the writers had inflicted on her. York didn't have the juice to pull off miracles in early season one. Sorry, Julie. Should've hung on in there for the season one finale when a wish took Rob from sidewalk pizza to perfect health.

A pickpocket? Not with that mouth. Ash had always thought if _Hourglass_ had been on cable, Lee’s character would've been a hooker or a rich guy's guilty pleasure and making more on his knees than he did lifting wallets. He'd shared that thought with Lee once and gotten a scowl, a fist slammed into his gut—even angry, Lee had known better than to mark Ash's face—and Lee in a sulk that lasted for three straight days.

"I know you want something," Ash said when Ben didn't answer. "Are you serious about a job? Because if so, you need to speak to my agent."

"I'm making an _Hourglass_ movie," Ben said. "Straight to TV or DVD, done as cheaply as I can without making it look obvious. A where-are-they-now deal, so I need you and Lee back as Steve and Rob, and not as walk-ons or mentors for a younger couple, but as the leads. Which is why I need Lee."

Shock held Ash silent for a moment, but his reaction was too strong to hold back. "The fuck? No! No fucking way! And you don't need Lee, because you don't have me." He stood, needing to move and put some distance between himself and Ben’s proposal. The self-control that years of acting had ingrained in him allowed him to make his next words calmly amused. "What in God's name makes you think anyone would be interested in a movie about a TV show no one remembers?"

"Still got fans online," Ben said, his shrewd eyes appraising. "I looked. Lot of porn stories, lot of nitpicking details, lot of interest."

"You're still talking about a few thousand people." Ash had only a hazy idea of what Ben was talking about, but he was certain he was right. When they were airing, they'd never been more than moderately popular, for God's sake. "It will bomb, and the last thing I need is my personal _Gigli_."

"If it's got my name on it, it won't bomb," Ben said with an indifferent confidence.

Ash was about to argue that point with as much vehemence as he could muster when his cell rang. He settled for a cold glare directed at an unaffected Ben and retrieved his phone from the bar.

"What?"

"Manners, Ash," Joe said, his voice tight with excitement. "Suppose I'd been trying to sell you something, think how hurt I'd be."

"Not a good time," Ash told his agent. "Call me back in ten, okay?"

"It's always a good time to tell you that you've landed a one-million-dollar role in a movie."

For the briefest moment, Ash felt excitement fizz through him, but coincidences were for scripts, not real life.

"If it's got Adler's name on it, I'm not interested."

Joe's swift, shocked inhale came over clearly. His agent hated being the last to know something juicy. "Ash? Are you holding out on me, buddy?"

"No," Ash said evenly. "Adler's sitting right here and he's been filling me in on some of the details."

"Oh." Joe sounded peeved. "I wanted to be the one to tell you what a sweet deal I'd arranged."

Joe would've claimed he'd arranged sunrise if he thought he could get away with it. "Guess you'll have to give Adler a slap on the wrist when you tell him officially, agent to asshole, that I'm _not fucking interested_."

"Ash," Joe hissed, all the friendliness gone. "I'm telling _you_ , agent to dumber than shit actor, that you can't pass this one up. The negative publicity alone would kill you."

That made zero sense. Joe couldn't see him, but Ash frowned. "Why would there be any? It's a freaking remake and people are sick to death of them."

"There would be a shitload of it, because a chunk of the proceeds is going to dying kids and the actors are gonna donate ten percent of their fee to charity. Don't worry, I'll make sure your fee gets raised to cover it so you don't lose out."

Charity and Ben didn't go together in a ham-and-eggs way. Ash turned and looked at Ben who smiled affably and topped up his glass, clearly filling in the blanks on the conversation he was openly listening to.

"I don't get it."

"The movie was Adler's kid's idea." Joe's voice turned syrupy. "That little Sarah, what a sweetheart, huh? So good to see kids with a conscience and social awareness—"

"Her name's Samantha," Ash said and saw Ben's attention sharpen. "We'll talk about this later, Joe." He ended the call before Joe could protest and turned his phone off. Cheaper than giving in to the impulse to hurl it into the pool.

Ash had met Samantha once, four years ago, but he recalled long hair and intelligent eyes. A nice kid. He hadn't known who she was at the time. He'd heard a high, sweet voice ask for a Coke and turned, wondering why there was a child at a party that was getting on the wild side even for someone as jaded as he was. He'd seen her sitting on a footstool, smiling up at the adults around her with complete confidence, and had been about to walk away when one of the men pulled out a baggie filled with white powder, a smile slipping stupidly across his flushed face.

Samantha had taken it from him with a puzzled but polite, "Thank you." As jokes went, it sucked, but Ash had expected the guy to take the coke off her a moment later. He’d carried on his conversation, then glanced over again, needing to make sure the kid was okay. The asshole had cleared a space on a black marble-topped coffee table, cut the coke into two lines, and was showing the child how to roll up a bill to make a tube.

Ash had played action heroes in the past, dispatching bad guys with crisp punches and kicks, but those were scripted fights. He settled for a different target, scooping Samantha into his arms neatly.

“Hey! Put the kid down.”

“I’ll put you six feet under if you don’t back the hell off.”

Recognition dawned as Ash spoke. The man was Seth Jones, a rising star who’d gone from cabarets in Vegas to his own TV show, followed by a bit part in an unexpectedly successful movie. Seth was hot, but if this was how he spent his money, he’d cool off fast.

“Didn’t figure you for a saint, Morden.” Seth stood, swaying like a palm tree. “Heard lots and lots and lots of funny stuff about _you_.”

Always that punch of panic, but Ash kept his expression calm. “Yeah? Well, you never heard I give drugs to kids.”

He played back his first glance. Sam had been on the footstool, but Seth had stood real close, stroking her blonde hair and then her back. Could be nothing, could be creepy. Ash put his money on creepy.

He took Samantha to a quiet part of the patio, next to a koi pond, the fish swimming placidly, and found out her name and who her father was.

"Do you know my daddy?"

Did he ever. "Yeah, we worked together on a show, years back."

She yawned, showing off all her teeth. "Can you tell him I'm tired and I want to go home?"

"I'll tell him." He tipped a passing waitress who looked as if her feet were killing her a hundred bucks to stay with Samantha while he went in search of Adler.

"Does she remember me?" Ash asked Ben now and watched Ben's hand tighten around the glass he held. "From that night at the party?"

"I don't know," Ben said, his voice rough. "She was only a kid."

"Yeah." Too young to be at any party that didn’t include birthday cake.

"I owe you."

Ben had taken in what Ash was telling him, dumped the girl on his lap onto the floor in a slither of satin, her legs kicking wildly, and disappeared in the direction of the pond. Ash hadn't bothered to follow him.

"I didn't do it for you." Curiosity prompted Ash to say, "What did you do to Seth? He disappeared after that."

Ben grimaced. "What do you think?"

Wild fantasies of hit men and thugs settled down to something a little more realistic. "Blacklisted him?"

Ben swept his hand through the air in a final way. "He might have thought he was bigger than God, but he learned better. By the time I'd finished making calls, he wouldn't have gotten a walk-on in a kindergarten play. I killed him. Dead. No one messes with my baby, and if she wants you in this movie, by God, she'll get it."

Ash sighed. "It's gonna tank, Ben."

"I know."

"The money goes to charity?"

"I'm as sleazy as the next producer, but I wouldn't lie about that." Ben drained his drink and put it on the table, then struggled to his feet. "So, are you in?"

Ash shrugged and gave Ben a resigned smile. He would regret this, but realistically, his hands were tied. Joe knew it, Ben knew it, damn them both to hell. "What the fuck. I'm not doing anything else at the moment, so why not?"

Ben pursed his lips and nodded, mercifully not gloating. "Good to be working with you again."

"Cut the crap."

"No, I mean it. You were a pro and I appreciated that. It's why I hated to lose you, but I'm going to wipe that out. Should've done it after you helped Sam, but what can I say? I bear grudges, always have, always will."

"That's not news," Ash told him. He raised his eyebrows. "So who's playing Rob?"

"I told you. Original cast all the way, assuming they're alive and kicking. Or not under contract."

"But I told _you_ ," Ash said, his gut tensing up as he pictured himself acting with Lee again, a mixture of elation and apprehension filling him. "Lee's gone. I haven't heard from him since the show ended."

If he pictured Lee's face that last day together, twisted with dismay and hurt, he'd never hold it together until Ben left, but, God, it was hard not to think about that particular elephant in the room. Ash took a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm.

"Same goes for me," Ben said. "Doesn't matter. I thought you might know, but I've already started the ball rolling." He tapped the side of his nose. "Forget about cherchezing the femme—especially with Lee, huh?—what you've gotta do is follow the money. Now and then some country buys the rights to show Hourglass and you get your cut, right?"

Puzzled, Ash nodded. "Not for a while now, but yeah, I guess."

"So money leaves a nice green track."

"That sounds like something I don't want to ask questions about," Ash said.

Ben clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. "An actor with brains? And I thought I'd seen it all."

That irritated Ash into pointing out something Ben would discover for himself soon enough. "You might find him, but he won't be as easy to persuade as I was. He doesn't care about the negative publicity. He's left the business. "

"No one leaves," Ben said with unshakeable certainty. "I'll get him back." He eyed Ash. "Maybe you think you will too. Don't."

"I wasn't— We weren't—" Ash bit his lip under Ben's knowing look and stopped trying to cover up something the size of Mount Everest with a few buckets of sand. "It didn't end well and I'm not interested in picking up the pieces. If you do get him back and we have to work together, it'll be strictly professional."

"Like last time, huh?" Ben chuckled, rich and dirty, and then sobered up. "I don't give a fuck who _you_ fuck. Never did. I still don't want you getting outed though, so keep it in your pants. And yeah, times have changed and things are looser, but you know as well as I do that coming out would be a PR disaster. Oh, no one will say that's why the roles start drying up, of course not. We're all so fucking liberal these days, right? You'll still be dead in the water, though. I'd make a joke about careers ending with a bang _and_ a whimper, but it's been a long day." He nodded. "I'll be in touch. See ya."

Ash watched him walk away with a feeling that whoever had won this encounter it wasn't him. When it came to Ben Adler, that was usually the way it went.

S _ources are reporting that the recent shakeup in execs at a certain network might spell curtains for one of this reviewer's favorite guilty pleasure shows. Fans are already responding, with the network's offices deluged with egg timers and a petition with over ten thousand names._

_Will the wishes of the fans be enough to save the show or has time run out for Ash Morden's character, Steve York?_

_[_ Sound Bites _May 1995 issue]_

Chapter Five

Lee drew his paintbrush over the window frame and watched a fly home in on the wet paint as if it were sugar-flavored. He sighed as it struggled to free itself, pity long since evaporated into a weary exasperation. This was fly number seven, and like the ones before it, he'd have to dispatch it mercifully quickly, then pick its remains off the frame—no fun at all—and touch up the brushstrokes. He did what was needed, repressing a shudder, and decided to break for lunch. It was only eleven, but he'd been up since dawn and his stomach was growling.

After wrapping his brush in a plastic bag to keep it from drying out, he stepped back to study what he'd achieved. Not bad. The house was starting to look the way he'd pictured it in his head when he’d begun the renovation. It had two stories and a porch running around it that had been an obstacle course before Lee had re-floored it. A cupola perched in the center of the peaked roof extended the height of the house. Great views from it, the ocean to the west and the sparsely forested mountains to the east, but Lee always felt as if it were swaying in the wind when he was up there and he thought of it more as a crow’s nest. Large, roofed balconies led off two of the bedrooms, giving the house an imposing air that its shabbiness mocked. It wasn't at all typical of California, but since it was a faithful copy of a house in Georgia, that wasn't too surprising—and in California, anything went.

The painting was the frosting on the cake, the visible, showy part, the fun bit. Reaching this stage had involved weeks of work replacing rotten boards and cracked windows, sanding wooden sidings, and re-shingling the roof. The garden was a riot of weeds, and the vegetable plot consisted mostly of strawberry plants that would feed the birds when the fruit appeared, but he was only one man and he couldn't do everything.

Inside, the house was a gutted shell, waiting for walls to be plastered and hardwood floors to be sanded and stained. The original furniture was in storage, waiting for its return to the appropriate rooms, with some additions that Lee had found in estate sales and antique shops. Not that any of that would be happening soon. It was early spring, and the exterior of the house took priority. Sleeping on a mattress on the floor didn't bother Lee. Most nights, he was so exhausted that going to sleep was more like passing out.

He was painting the windows white but he couldn't decide on a color for the house itself. When he saw it in his mind, it was clear and detailed, but the color he picked mentally changed every time, from a soft leafy green to Wedgewood blue, from there to dove gray or terracotta. Decisions, decisions.

Lee wiped his paint-smeared hands on his equally messy jeans and set off around the porch to the back door, already thinking about what to put on the sandwich he craved. Sharp cheese, tangy pickle, and thick slices of juicy tomato, all purchased from the local farmer's market two days earlier, along with homemade bread, nutty with a chewy crust, sounded good. Add in a cold beer, and he'd be ready to get back to painting. And fly-killing.

He'd taken a few steps when a car coming up the long, overgrown driveway stopped him in his tracks. He was on friendly terms with his neighbors, but in a distant way, though he’d known some of them most of his life. It'd been weeks since anyone had come calling socially. They knew he wasn't set up for visitors with the house in the state it was. From time to time, when he had a job that needed more than one pair of hands, he'd ask for help, paying for it with food and beer and the promise to return the favor. The men who pitched in arrived in trucks jouncing carelessly over the ruts in the driveway, radios playing loudly. This was a low, sleek car, silver and black. It looked expensive and classy. Lee didn't know anyone to whom those words applied. Not anymore.

He walked to the top of the porch steps and waited for the driver to show himself. When he did, Lee took a step back, not giving ground but rejecting everything that the man represented. Telling himself not to be stupid, he folded his arms across his chest to hide his shaking hands and called out, "I don't buy from door-to-door salesmen, sorry."

"You always were a funny guy,” Ben Adler said, slamming the car door with a careless shove. He gestured at the steps. "Are they safe? This place looks like the big bad wolf could blow it down without bothering to huff and puff."

"I know you'd sue me if you fell through them and I can't afford to pay, so why don't you get back in your car and make tracks?"

"As soon as we've finished doing business, I will," Adler replied. "Is there anywhere we can sit and talk?"

Lee shook his head, his heart hammering. God, what the hell was Ben _doing_ here? "I'm busy."

"Simons, this place is so far out of my comfort zone I'm gonna be in therapy for weeks. If I can drive all the way up here to see you, after spending good money on locating you, then you can spare me ten minutes, okay?" Adler gave him a puzzled look. "What did I ever do to you, anyway? I thought we were friends."

"Is that why you wouldn't take my calls after the show ended?" Lee asked, a headache kicking in as his tension levels rocketed. Adler had always had that effect on him, going back to day one of their acquaintance. "I never thought we were best buddies, but I wasn't expecting to get treated like shit."

Adler looked vaguely sheepish, which for him was the equivalent of a groveling apology. "Sorry. I was pissed as hell with Morden and I let it spill out over you."

Hearing Ash's name made Lee's stomach twist, and he was glad it was empty. Not that throwing up over Adler's expensive shoes wouldn't have been entertaining.

"What he did had nothing to do with me. Nothing. I was ready to sign up for another season."

"I know," Ben said soothingly. "Hell, once I'd calmed down, I looked for you to bring you in on my next project, but you weren't around."

"And you didn't look too hard," Lee said. "So why now, after all these years? Little late for a retake, isn't it?"

"Funny." Ben scratched at his cheek, then took off his sunglasses with the air of a soldier laying down his arms. "Looks to me like we're talking anyway, so can we do it someplace where I don't get a crick in my neck staring up at you?"

Lee exhaled, a hissed, impatient breath. "Oh, why not. Come around back."

He led the way to the yard at the back of the house and a bench under an archway. In a few months the wood of the arch would disappear under a tangle of wild roses, but for now, there were green shoots and thorns, a promise of scent and color, no more than that.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked, manners kicking in belatedly. "There's beer in the fridge, or some coffee left over from breakfast."

"I'll pass, thanks." Adler studied the bench, then sat cautiously, jumping when it creaked. "Why is everything falling to bits around here?"

"I'm renovating," Lee said. "It looks worse before it gets better."

"That sounds like something they put inside fortune cookies." Ben looked at the house, shading his eyes against the sunlight. "Did you pay actual money for it?"

Lee laughed. "Do you know how much this place is worth, with the ocean view and this much land?"

"Plenty if it was anywhere near a city, but out here? Not much, right?"

"You'd be wrong," Lee told him, "but I inherited it from my grandfather last year, so it doesn't matter. I didn't buy it and I don't plan on selling it."

He'd nursed the old man for three years, loving him the way he had all his life, but endlessly frustrated by his grandfather's refusal to let him do anything beyond basic maintenance to their home. Jake Simons had been happy with the house the way it was, blind to the slow decay that was killing it as surely as a failing heart was killing its owner.

"The one who raised you when your parents died?"

Lee was surprised Ben remembered that much. "My mom's still alive, but three husbands further on. I haven't spoken to her for years and that suits both of us. My dad's the one who died. Drug overdose. He was a musician, and I guess it's a work hazard."

He’d been four when his dad had died. He'd never mourned the loss of a man he had no recollection of whatsoever. No misty Hallmark moments, no regrets. His mother had dumped him onto Jake's doorstep and disappeared in search of another meal ticket, the curly, waist-length black hair that was her main beauty caught up in a frothy cloud by the wind. Lee had watched her walk away and cried until Jake had coaxed him into smiling with a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a box of battered toy cars.

"All these years and you've been here?" Ben marveled. "How the hell do you stay sane?"

"Only the last three years or so," Lee corrected him, "and who said I am?"

"I hope you are," Ben said, his gaze fixed on Lee in a way that made Lee feel like a moth pinned to a board. "I'm a busy man so I'll cut to the chase. I've got a part for you. I'm doing a movie version of _Hourglass_ , a where-are-they-now deal, and I'm getting the original cast back together."

For a moment, the quick patter of Ben's words didn't make sense, an anagram that needed unscrambling, or a joke, but as Lee worked out the punch line, Ben added, "So how about it? Want to step back into Rob Dolan's shoes? I've got a contract in the car, but you'll want your agent to look at it."

Shit, he was serious. Ben Adler didn't joke about contracts. Ever.

"I don't have an agent." Okay, wrong thing to say. That implied a partial acceptance of an awful idea. "I don't need one because I'm not interested."

"It's a surprise." Ben nodded, his voice reasonable. "I turn up, throw this at you. You're in shock, I get that. It's understandable."

"Good." Lee stood. "So understand this. I'm out of the business, I'm happy right here, and if original cast means that you've got Ash fucking Morden back, there's no way, no goddamn way, I'm ever signing that contract. So get back in your car, drive back to the city, and find another Rob."

"You'd be happy with that, would you?" Ben asked with lethal shrewdness. "You made that role. You owned that character. Could you watch someone else play him?"

"I couldn't give a rat's ass if _you_ played him," Lee said. "Plus, there's no way I'd pay good money to see the movie, so I'll avoid any potential trauma by pretending it doesn't exist."

"It's going straight to DVD," Ben said. "I'll send you a copy."

"I've got nothing to play it on."

"So I send you a player too," Ben said with a shrug. "Don't tell me curiosity wouldn't make you take a look. You haven't changed that much."

"You have no idea," Lee said wearily. He looked in the mirror these days and he didn't hate what he saw, no, but he looked, well, normal. The razor-edged cheekbones had blurred, and he was about thirty pounds heavier, some of it muscle, sure, but not all of it. His dark hair was still curly if he let it grow, but it was easier to keep it cropped short. Most of the changes were less visible. The starstruck young kid, eager for everything that had escaped his dad, the fame, the fortune, the _fun_ , had become a solitary, focused nonentity about to turn thirty-three. A nonentity who hadn't gotten laid in so long that Lee sometimes stared down at his dick in the shower and felt sorry for it as he did his best to make it happy with a soap-slick hand.

It was his fault. He didn't have time to date and he wasn't interested in one-night stands. That left him jerking off when he had the energy.

"You're an actor," Ben said with complete conviction. "Actors never retire. Ever. And this movie isn't about making money for me. Part of the proceeds will go to charity, including ten percent of your salary."

"Gee, thanks," Lee said. "I don't get to decide how generous I am for myself?"

"No," Ben said, which was so like him Lee felt a pang of nostalgia. "Ash is in; so is everyone else who's still alive, and shooting starts in three months, on June the first, whether the script and sets are ready or not." A baleful glint in his eyes suggested they would be or people would pay. "And we're wrapping before fall. I've got real work to do then."

Lee had seen scripts rewritten over a weekend by writers with caffeine jitters and hunted, harried expressions and sets built in an afternoon that looked convincingly solid, but he'd always thought it was different for a movie. _Hourglass_ had churned out episodes in seven days, but a movie could take months to set up and shoot. "That's one hell of a rush job, and you don't sound like you want to do it, so what's the deal here?"

Ben sighed and elaborated. "I'm doing this for Sam, my little girl. She's a huge fan of the show and she nagged me into making this movie. When it comes to her, what can I say? I'm weak. I even promised she could see the sets and meet all of you. Once. I don't need kids on set unless they're acting."

Lee's headache was easing, as if his mind had decided he'd fallen off a ladder and cracked his head and this was a fever dream, a hallucination. It wasn't real, so it didn't matter. It couldn't be real. Ben Adler making movies because his daughter asked him to? Ben Adler here, right here, in Lee's yard, with his thousand-dollar suit picking up dust and splinters from the bench?

"I appreciate the offer," Lee said, wondering why it was so difficult to stay mad with Ben. Maybe they taught producers Jedi mind tricks or something. "And I'm happy to let bygones be bygones when it comes to the fucking shitty way you acted—" Okay, maybe he was still a little mad. "Ash, though… I can't work with him again. Ever."

"You could buy an ocean of paint with a million dollars," Ben said and took Lee's breath away. One _million_? Less the ten percent to charity, it was still good money for a few months' work. "That's the same as Morden's getting, by the way. I'm treating you as co-stars for this. Equal billing."

Lee had carefully _not_ followed Ash's career, but he knew how high Ash's star had risen in comparison to the fizzle and spark of his damp squib. "Ash is never gonna go for that."

"He will if he wants the part, and he does. Did, I should say. He's already signed the contract."

"Why would you set it up that way?" Lee asked, suspicion flaring and making him abandon his mental shopping list of what his fee would buy for the house. God, he could do everything he wanted to, inside and out, still doing most of it himself but hiring professional help when he needed it.

Ben smiled, the slow, evil smile that was usually followed by a screaming fit any diva would envy and admire. "Why did I humiliate Ash Morden and force him to share the limelight with the man he fucked over as badly as he screwed with me? Why do you fucking think?"

Put like that, it made perfect sense.

"Let me get us both a beer and I'll take a look at the contract," Lee said and winced as the smile was turned on him, still scary, though he supposed it was intended to look friendly.

***

Ben's car pulled away, the low roar of its engine soon fading to nothing. Lee sat on the porch steps in the honey warmth of the spring day and fell apart after an hour of tight control, swearing under his breath as he vented his emotions. He worked himself up to the point where sitting still was unendurable and set off running, finding a path through overgrown grass to the trail leading down to the beach.

Ash's face was one he never allowed himself to conjure, but no matter where he went that afternoon, walking along the beach until dusk fell and the rising tide stole the sand, he couldn't shake the memories.

Ash hadn't been Lee's first lover, but he'd been the first man Lee had loved. Their relationship had begun early in the second season, after months of faux-flirting and innuendos in public, countered by visible girlfriends for both of them. Pretending to be hot for each other was a running joke fueled by the lurid fan mail they got. No one took it seriously, least of all Lee, who watched Ash date one gorgeous woman after another and kept his fantasies about his co-star to himself. Lee had his own women to date. His agent, Claudia, a pragmatic woman who knew where the important bodies were buried, had laid it out for him with brutal clarity.

"Everyone's shaking in their boots about AIDS these days and no one wants a gay actor on set. Oh, we both know how many of them are, but it comes down to appearances. Which means nothing has changed, because that's how this town has always operated. So get your kicks discreetly—I can give you some numbers to call, escort agencies and such—and get some arm candy for the press to coo over."

Lee, not as cynical and worldly-wise as he tried to appear back then, had taken the advice on being discreet, but not the phone numbers. The thought of calling an agency and asking them to send over someone to fuck, as if he were ordering pizza or a cab, left him cold. He wasn't well known enough to get mobbed by paparazzi so it was easy to find a bar and pick up someone when the need grew too strong to ignore. Hiding who he was… Well, he was an actor. It was never Lee Simons who gasped, arching up against a hard body and feeling an uncomplicated lust sizzle through him, or moaned around a mouthful of cock as it slid past his lips. He had half a dozen identities he assumed, changing his appearance subtly without needing anything as crude as a fake moustache or a wig. And mostly, he wasn’t asked for a name.

It wasn't much better than the agency option, but at least he knew the men he was with genuinely wanted to be with him. The women he dated were never around for long enough to notice that sex with them wasn't his goal. He could get it up if he had to and fake the rest. That would've made him feel guilty if every one of them hadn't made it plain that dating him was a stepping stone to bigger and better.

Lee was never sure when he realized Ash was hiding the same secret. It wasn't a lightbulb moment, more of a sunrise, with the dark sky gradually, imperceptibly, turning blue. Maybe Ash touched him too often, let his hand linger too long when Lee didn't move away. Maybe between actors it was impossible to pass off a mask as a true face. Lee only knew that one night after a brief, cryptic conversation that left him praying he'd decoded it correctly, he and Ash left the set and met in a motel thirty minutes away, coming into each other's arms with avid hunger, two men with needs, no more than that. The enclosed hothouse world of the studio, the never-high-enough ratings, Ben's brutally effective methods for wringing the best performance out of them—all of it ceased to matter.

They'd worn each other out that night. The room had reeked of sex by the time they'd finished, a raw, musky scent Lee didn't want to shower away. Ash had planned it all. He'd been the one to rent the room, paying cash, with Lee nowhere in sight. The room was at the back of the building, which wasn't the sleazy hot-sheets dive Lee had expected, but a reasonably decent place. Lee had left his car a block away and walked through the door Ash had left open. Hours later, he'd showered, using his usual brand of shampoo and shower gel, provided by Ash, not the tiny bottles in the bathroom courtesy of the motel.

"You don't think the makeup people notice when you smell different?" Ash had asked when Lee raised his eyebrows at the sight of the two bottles. "If we sit down in the trailer smelling of the same brand of shampoo, they'll know what we were doing, trust me. So you use these, and I'll use my brand, and we'll be fine."

"You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Yeah. Does that bother you?"

It did, a little. "Only if you lie about it."

"I don't lie. And I don't screw around when I'm with someone." Ash had cupped Lee's face with a gentleness Lee hadn't gotten from him before. "I'm not promising this will last—my track record's lousy—and you know I've got to keep on dating for the look of it, like you, but until it stops working between us, you're it. The only one."

Lee had shrugged and kissed Ash again, already addicted to the way Ash melted against him when he did that. "It's the same for me, remember? The need to lie. But I won't do it with you, I swear."

"Yeah, and you have no idea how much easier it makes it," Ash said, his roving hands distracting Lee so that he never got around to exploring the ambiguity of Ash's words.

A wave rushed at Lee's bare feet, gritty with sand, and he stood still while the retreating water sucked away the sand under his feet, making him stagger, off-balance. Losing Ash had left him feeling that way.

He picked up a pebble, brown and black, shining because it was wet, and threw it out into the water. It was supposed to take his troubles with it, according to a therapist he'd spent six months with, spilling his guts and losing all self-respect in the process.

The pebble struck the ocean, the small sound lost in the roar of the waves, and Lee didn't feel any different at all.

He would see Ash again soon.

God, he hoped they had a fight scene so he got to punch the bastard hard.

_For Sale_

_The silk shirt worn by Steve York (Ash Morden) in the FINAL EPISODE of HOURGLASS._

_Guaranteed genuine (signed letter from studio included)._

_Shirt is XL, navy blue, top button missing (popped off in the fight with Rob Dolan (Lee Simons)), small tear in right arm, but is otherwise in perfect condition._

_This is a ONCE IN A LIFETIME item that any Hourglass fan would treasure._

_Buy now price $80.00. Post and packaging extra. Can mail worldwide._

_[eBay listing from October 2004]_

Chapter Six

Ash sat slumped on the couch, a barely touched drink in his hand, staring out through the patio doors at the sun setting over the ocean. It was a gaudy, over-the-top spectacle tonight, with huge, towering clouds backlit until they glowed scarlet and set the ocean on fire. Nature's FX department was second to none. Ash saw plenty of dawns when he was shooting, but sunsets were his favorites, the grand finale of the day, the fat lady singing.

In the weeks since he'd signed the contract with Ben, he'd felt pretty much the way he imagined a man would who'd made a deal with the devil. The short-term prospects looked good, but in the long term, he was screwed.

The sky turned navy and the ocean turned black. Ash took a gulp of his drink, the whisky watered down by the melted ice, and shuddered at the taste. He set the glass aside and stood. He'd put this off for long enough. If he was playing Steve York again, he had to crawl back inside the character, and that meant watching the goddamn episodes. He had his own box of tapes, official ones from the studio, one for each episode, but they were in storage somewhere. Ben had sent over a set of DVDs, assuring Ash the quality was fine and telling him he wouldn't need to watch them all. As if one look at himself on screen, heroic jaw jutting as he adjusted the silk tie York loved to wear, would bring every tic and mannerism back.

Well, maybe it would, but that wasn't how he would play York. If Ben wanted to see where the characters would be a decade later, then he’d discover Steve York had changed in more than looks. The businessman with the newly minted heart of gold and a soft spot for the street kid he'd taken under his wing would have used up wish after wish, each one eating away at his life expectancy. He'd be bitter, scared, resentful.

And lonely. Because the show had ended with Rob walking out on him. The fans had hated that final episode, but it hadn't mattered in light of the cancellation. In some ways, the dark, downbeat ending had served to keep interest alive—because Ben had been right and the fans were still out there. Ash, curious, had searched online and found page after page of links to all things _Hourglass_. He'd clicked on a few, then backed away. The devotion shining from them was oddly touching—in a few cases mildly creepy—but the countless erotic stories featuring Steve and Rob made him feel like a voyeur.

He'd smothered a grin at one story generously gifting him with a ten-inch cock and short-changing Lee's character shamefully, though.

Rob had left York's penthouse in L.A., but if the movie was to attract any viewers, he would need to return. Ash didn't know how the writers would handle that, but it wasn't his problem. For all his talk about making the character a certain way, there was only so much he could do. He'd get the script and learn his lines, charting the emotional and physical changes his character went through, so when the scenes were shot out of order, as they always were, he'd know how happy or distraught he was supposed to be. He'd decide how to get his lines across—and have Ben correct him. He'd sit and let makeup artists and the costume department recreate York using his face and body. That was what Ben paid him for, not writing. Having said that, Ash had always seen the character of Steve York clearly in his mind, and when he’d been on the show, he'd felt protective of the guy.

Other stars loudly demanded rewrites, or fussed endlessly about their character's motivations. Ash had never bothered making a fuss before. If he didn't like a line, or thought it didn't match what the character would say, he changed it, ad-libbing blatantly, and the director usually let him get away with it.

Ash retrieved the unopened box of DVDs from his desk and spent a frustrating few minutes dealing with the yards of packing tape wrapped around it. The DVDs were in clear plastic cases, each labeled neatly with the relevant episode numbers, three to a DVD, and some thoughtful underling had included an episode list, both numbers and names. Ash glanced at it, trying to fit plots to titles. Every interviewer asked what his favorite episode was, and he'd usually said the pilot, because it had set up everything that followed. That was true, but it was the episode shot around the time his relationship with Lee began that he remembered. “Spark in the Dark” had been aptly named, but that observation wasn't something that he could share with anyone but Lee.

It had taken eight days to film, and he'd taken Lee to that motel room around day three, after the tension and lust between them had built to the point where Ash was on edge, ready to snap. He didn't remember much about days four to eight. They'd turned in performances that sizzled, eye-fucking until Ben had threatened to douse them in ice water if they didn't stop screwing around, but the only thing on Ash's mind was when he'd get to kiss Lee again and spread his legs wide, begging for the sweet, hard slam of Lee's cock in his ass before returning the favor as soon as he could.

By day eight, they'd been walking carefully, only losing the stiffness when they were acting and training took over. Steve York's ass hadn't been nailed twice the night before, after all, with an experimental spanking added into the mix that hadn't done much besides reduce them both to giggles. Ash had practically crawled off the set that day, heading not for a bed with Lee but a hot bath.

They'd been more careful after that, saving the marathon sessions for their rare days off, keeping their hunger at bay with a series of increasingly risky encounters, quick and deliciously dirty.

Ash picked up the DVD with “Spark in the Dark” on it, chewed his lip, then tossed the DVD back into the box. He'd watch one at random. Three episodes from midway through season one? Why not? With the sense of irony he used for humor these days, he made some popcorn, extra salt, extra butter, and grabbed a beer before settling back on the couch.

The music from the opening credits had his hand closing into a fist around hot, greasy popcorn and his heartbeat quickening. It was an arty, melancholy piece of music, a woman's voice wailing high and desolate, wordlessly mourning mankind's fate. The woman was Alura, who'd saved Steve York's life, then gifted—or cursed—him with the power of the hourglass. She'd shown up a few times on the show, in the Very Special episodes, as Ash thought of them, a wry twist to his mouth, and in the finale.

He viewed the shots of himself in the credits with an objectivity the years had taught him, automatically critiquing everything from the shot choice to the angle of his face. It never bothered him, seeing himself on the screen. Whether he was being interviewed or playing a character, he was acting, every moment. Watching himself in a home movie, genuinely relaxed, might have been potentially embarrassing, but watching himself act never was. Like any viewer, he was on the other side of the screen, and if he brought a more knowledgeable pair of eyes, well, as he'd learned in his brief foray online, the show's fans had sharp eyes too.

It took him a few minutes to remember the plot of the episode—not that they'd varied much. Steve or Rob found someone who needed them, usually through Steve getting a vision, sometimes a random meeting. Once they'd met the problem of the week, there would be a few obstacles to overcome, because they always tried to help without invoking the power of the hourglass, and in the end, a reluctant but resigned Steve would give in and wish a day of his life away. The episode wrapped with a touching or funny scene, usually featuring the two men and often their grumpy neighbor who'd demonstrated an unlikely innocence about the two of them living together, and roll the credits, please.

This one was about a firefighter. The opening scene featured him emerging from a burning building, carrying his buddy, both of them attractively smudged and sweaty. They were coughing, but not enough to affect their line delivery. Realism wasn't required. Ash watched Steve experience a cryptic dream featuring a falling beam trapping the firefighter's leg—no way to know who the guy was, of course—then choked on a mouthful of beer when Lee—Rob—appeared. Rob shook Steve awake, saying something appropriately friendly for a man wearing sleep pants perched on the bed of another man wearing only a sheet.

Ash didn't know what Lee looked like these days, but God, he'd been purely edible back then. Lust, uncomplicated and intense, slammed into him like a truck at the first sight of Lee's face, sleepy and concerned, his hair a rumpled mass of curls, framing it perfectly but crying out to be pushed back, exposing more of a neck Ash had always wanted to bite, hard. Lust, but nostalgic tenderness too. Lee had gotten to Ash in a way no one before or since had managed to do, leaving an indelible mark.

Or a scar. Hard to say.

Ash had looked for Lee after that final, furious scene between them, one no writer would have put their name to, because it'd been a raw bloody mess. He'd driven around L.A., seeing Lee's profile a dozen times and feeling his heart race, only to discover he'd been fooled by a passing resemblance. He'd put out feelers and talked casually to Lee's agent, Claudia, annoying his current agent in the process. Every avenue had dead-ended, and short of hiring a detective, Ash was out of options with his presence required urgently on set in Vancouver, which, ironically, was standing in for L.A.

By the time he'd returned from the movie, knowing he'd done well, his performance enriched by what he'd been going through, his sense of guilt and loss had simmered down to a vague resentment that Lee wasn't prepared to be happy for him and his big break. He'd made one last effort to reach out that had failed miserably.

On his TV, Rob and Steve fought playfully over the remote, with Steve holding it high and Rob, shorter by a few inches, snatching it after tickling Steve in the ribs, making him double over laughing. That laughter had been genuine and so had the tickling.

Ash hit the Pause button and closed his eyes for a moment, a child hiding from a monster. He couldn't watch any more of this. He'd gotten over Lee, for God's sake. He'd moved on and Lee had done the same. The guy would probably laugh in Ash’s face if Ash told him how much he'd been missed. He could hear Lee saying, "Ash, it was sex. Get over yourself."

Except that wasn't what Lee had screamed at him, angry tears bright in his eyes. Not even close.

The house phone rang, a shrill interruption he welcomed for once. His number was unlisted, but his family, most of whom lived in different states, used the landline to call him.

“Hi.” He never answered with his name. If the caller didn’t know his voice, he had no business calling.

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

Ash rolled his eyes and hung up on the husky, hate-filled whisper, not bothering to engage the man on the other end. If the guy called back, he’d go through the major hassle of changing his number, but it wasn’t likely. At least a religious nut beat a female fan breathing her sexual fantasies down the phone.

With restless energy filling him, he turned the TV off along with the answering machine If he was to meet Lee with a friendly, bland smile when shooting started in a few months, he needed to exorcise the demon. And if his unwanted caller tried again, he’d get nothing but a ringtone.

Forty minutes later, he turned in to the parking lot of the motel where he and Lee had met up, the same feverish excitement surging through him. Stupid of him. If he rented the same room they'd used, Lee still wouldn't walk through the door, dark eyes wide, biting his lip so hard that when Ash had kissed him, he'd felt the heat in that place sting his lip. He'd licked it cool, soothing it.

The motel hadn't changed much. Places like that never did. God, their room would probably still have the same curtains hanging in the window, a geometric pattern of triangles in garish colors, and the same nondescript brown carpet.

With a sense of inevitability pushing him forward, Ash got out of his car. He thought that he'd forgotten the room number, but when he opened his mouth to describe the room to the desk clerk in the small lobby, he found he hadn't.

"Thirty-five? Yes, that's free. For the one night? Of course."

The clerk was all smooth smiles. Ash wasn't sure if he'd been recognized or not. He was well-known but not famous, a comfortable state of affairs. He handed over his credit card, accepted his room key, and walked away, caught up in the past to such an extent that everything else faded away.

The room wasn't exactly the same. Different curtains, carpet, and cover on the bed. Maybe a different bed. At some point, the motel had undergone a renovation. It didn't matter. It was the same room, and Ash felt the weight of the ten years that had passed slow his steps as he walked into the small bathroom.

In the mirror his face looked pale, his eyes wide, but if he closed his eyes Ash could see a different reflection, himself, naked, smiling, with Lee's arms around him. He recalled that moment so vividly, the view of Lee's back and ass, his hands sliding down to cup and squeeze, slap gently, caress. He'd always loved Lee's ass, tightly packed with muscle and covered with smooth skin, the undersides of his cheeks faintly dusted with downy hair where they met the tops of his thighs.

Lee had grinned at him, pressed a lingering kiss against Ash's mouth, then slid down to his knees, never breaking eye contact, and taken Ash's cock into his mouth.

Ash moaned, his hands clutching at air, not Lee's shoulders or the thick cloud of his hair. Aroused by the memory, ambushed by it, he turned away from the empty mirror to the bed. Hell, he'd paid for the room; he might as well use it.

Propped up against too-soft pillows, covered in coarser cotton that he was used to, his pants and shorts tossed over the small chair in the corner of the room, he took his dick in hand. Jerking off felt good. Better than it had for a while. He'd been in something of a dry spell recently, after months of dating women, lots of women, obsessively reinforcing the image of himself as straight. It was getting more difficult to pull that charade off with every year, but he didn't have the guts to come out, no matter how many other actors had taken that step.

Maybe when he was older. Maybe after this movie. Whatever was left of his fee once his agent, the charity, and the tax man finished biting chunks off it might be enough to make him financially secure—if he completely altered his lifestyle, scaling it down dramatically.

Ash forced the mundane away and concentrated on pretending it was Lee's hands on him, cupping his balls, working his dick harder. Lee had loved to talk during sex, not dirty talk, but a flow of random observations about the day, his busy hands never faltering. It'd been distracting as hell at first, but when Ash had complained, Lee had grinned at him and said, "So think of some good ways to shut me up." Ash had been able to do that without any difficulty at all, going for the obvious first and rubbing the head of his cock over Lee's mouth until it stopped forming words and made a circle instead. He'd soon learned a better method was to ignore Lee's thoughts on whether sprinkles on a doughnut were a welcome contrast to the overall squishiness or not and to get on with doing whatever he wanted. Lee's words would stutter and stall in a gratifying way when his nipples were being sucked wet and hot and chewed deep red.

"God, Lee, if you were here now, I'd let you talk," Ash whispered, to hear something besides his jerky breathing and the muted sound of a TV a few rooms over. "I'd let you do anything you wanted." Saying Lee's name made his dick throb and his balls tighten. Fuck, he could probably come from repeating it, his hands by his side, his body arching as he whimpered it, screamed it, sobbed it out.

In the end, his hand blurring, his wrist aching, he came with a moan that could've been anything, sweat breaking out on his body as he covered his dick with his hand, warm, slick cum coating his palm.

_OMGOMGOMG!! They've cancelled it!_ Hourglass _has been cancelled!! I can't—I'm gutted. I'm crying here, srsly. I don't know why, the article said something about contractual issues and timeslots and I JUST DON'T CARE!!_

_We've got to do something. We've got to get them to change their minds. Spread the word on all the lists you can. I'm going to start a petition and find out who to send it to._

_No more Steve? No more Rob? EVER? Two more episodes left? And they've already been filmed so God knows where they left it or if we'll ever see them hug the way we've been waiting for._

_I can't deal with this right now._

_I mean, I was at the con last month and there was NOTHING, you know? I got a photo with both of the guys and they were joking around like everything was FINE. Ash remembered me from the year before and asked after my cat!!!_

_I'm supposed to be posting another chapter of 'Sands of Time' and I know you guys want to know if Steve finally gets a clue about how Rob feels after what happened with the pie and it would get steamy, I swear, but after this I can't write a word. Totally blocked._

_Why did they cancel it? WHY?_

_[Post made on a Yahoo list 'Hourglasses and Egg Timers' in April 2000]_

Chapter Seven

Lee's pickup truck was reasonably clean, and he'd hosed the truck bed down before he’d left home, but as he parked it between a Porsche and a restored Cadillac, he was well aware of how incongruous it looked. Claudia's offices were still in the same place, but the area was a whole lot more upscale these days. He fed the meter and stood by it for a moment, taking in L.A. with every breath.

Noisy. Crowded. The air thick with smog and heat. After years of breathing ocean air out in the country, a few hours north of the city, it was an assault on his senses, but L.A. had been his home for a few years and he'd soon adjusted to the traffic, deftly changing lanes or inching forward at every opportunity to get to where he was going that little bit faster.

Lee could have called Claudia before making the drive in, but he'd needed a break from the house. He'd called it a vacation to make it seem like a reasonable action to take, but he hadn't fooled himself for long. He needed to make sure this was happening, and not even Ben Adler could bullshit Claudia Rivera. Lee hadn't signed the contract yet. He'd read it, the fine print the usual mess of legal terms and percentages, but he didn't trust himself to spot any loopholes.

Claudia hadn't dropped him as a client, not exactly, but when he'd told her flatly that he wasn't interested in building on his small success in _Hourglass_ and leveraging it into something bigger, there didn't seem much point in keeping in touch. Walking away had been easy.

Giving up always was.

He walked over to the door of the Rivera Agency, opened it, and stepped into air-conditioned cool air, fragrant with flowers. It used to be cooled by ineffective fans, and the only smells he associated with it were coffee and desperation emanating from the out-of-work actors in the waiting room.

It was bigger than he remembered, and as he glanced around, he realized Claudia had bought the place next door, a sad little shop selling used clothes, and extended her offices. Everything looked freshly decorated and sleek. He'd been part of Claudia's success, one of her biggest clients back then. From the looks of things, that wouldn't hold true these days. There were only two other people in the room, a good-looking man in his early twenties, stifling a yawn between texting someone, and a blonde teenage girl whose scruffy waif look had probably cost a fortune to achieve. The virtually empty reception told its own story. Claudia was too big to be accessible to walk-ins. Appointments only.

Lee cleared his throat and walked across a polished bamboo floor to where a decorative receptionist was eying him with barely concealed boredom. The nameplate on the desk informed the world that she wanted to be known as Tiffani Lord. Lee gave her a friendly smile that felt strange on his face. Okay, he'd been spending too much time alone if smiling felt weird.

"Hi, Tiffani," he said. "I'd like to see Claudia if she's around. If not, I can make an appointment, I guess." He hadn't planned to stay in town for long, but he supposed a few days wouldn't hurt.

"Ms. Rivera isn't taking on any new clients," Tiffani told him. "And she's fully booked for the next month."

Lee doubted that, but he didn't argue. "I'm not a new client; I'm an old one. Claudia represented me about ten years ago and—"

"Ms. Rivera isn't taking on any new clients."

"I heard you the first time." Lee forced another smile. "Look, tell her Lee Simons would like a few minutes of her time, will you? She'll remember me. We go way back."

"Ms. Rivera is busy today and I couldn't possibly interrupt her," Tiffani said primly.

Lee took in a deep, calming breath. Tiffani was an obstacle, but one he could overcome with some tact and a few cajoling words.

"You'd interrupt her for something big, wouldn't you?"

"I guess." Tiffani gave him a sweetly dismissive smile. "I'm not sure you qualify. I'm sorry, Mr. Steinman—"

"Simons."

A _whatever_ hung in the air, unspoken but implied by the affronted glint in Tiffani's eyes, an artificially bright blue that reminded Lee of swimming pools and chlorine.

"I think you should leave."

"I think you should stop pretending you're a receptionist and act like one," Lee told her, losing patience. "I've told you who I am and I've told you I'm a client. The least you can do is let Claudia know I'm here. Trust me, she's going to want to talk to me."

There was a stifled giggle and a low murmur of voices from the actors behind him as they exchanged opinions on the man making a fool of himself. Humiliating.

He could have handled this differently. Hell, he could've gotten Ben's people to call Claudia. No way would she have turned down a call from Ben Adler, and he'd have gotten red-carpet treatment from a cooing Tiffani, not this blank wall of indifference. Maybe if he'd shared the job offer from Ben with Tiffani, she'd have unbent enough to risk her manicure by picking up the phone, but something told Lee she wouldn't have believed him. And it was none of her damn business.

"If you won’t leave..." Tiffani finally pressed a button on the phone, but the person she spoke to wasn't Claudia. "Stan? Can you come to the front desk, please? I need an eviction."

"Stan? Claudia's bodyguard, you mean?" Finally, someone who knew him.

A door behind Tiffani's desk opened and a man walked through it, flexing his hands and smiling gently. Stan Baylor's dark face had a few more wrinkles around the eyes and he was bald now, through choice, not age, Lee guessed, but he was still a compact force of nature.

"You got some trash needs tossing, Tiffani?" Stan asked.

"This gentlemen here," Tiffani said with a toss of her highlighted hair. "I keep _telling_ him he can't walk in and see Ms. Rivera, but he won't listen."

"He'll listen to me," Stan assured her and walked around the desk to within grabbing distance of Lee, who stood his ground.

"Stan, it's me. Lee Simons." Stan blinked at him, studying him with more attention now, as a person, not a task, and the years dropped away. Stan had helped him find his first apartment and shepherded him around the city until Lee found his feet. They'd gone clubbing and double-dated now and then, though Lee sensed that Stan saw through the act and knew Lee was gay. They'd been friends, good friends. "What happened to your hair?"

"I could say the same to you." Stan held out his hand to be shaken before pulling Lee into a hug that left him feeling less adrift in stormy seas. "Where the hell have you _been_? You said you'd call, but I guess you forgot my number, huh?"

"I wanted to forget things," Lee said, "but you weren't one of them. I didn't have anything to say."

"You _know_ him?" Tiffani asked incredulously before Stan could reply.

"Sure do," Stan said. He gave Lee an apologetic look. "The girl's right, though. You won’t get in without an appointment, and no offence, but you know Claudia. She's not the sentimental type. If you're looking to make a comeback, you need to start smaller. I can give you a few places to try."

Accepting he’d need to play his ace, Lee shook his head. "Thanks, Stan, but I've already got a job lined up, a big one. I wanted to give Claudia the chance to represent me, and I know once she hears who it's with, she'll be interested."

Stan pursed his lips. "We get hundreds of people in here who think dreaming it makes it real, but it isn't that easy."

"Ben Adler wants me to play the lead in his next movie," Lee said, and God, saying it aloud like that drove it home how unlikely it was. He had trouble believing it himself.

Tiffani tittered. "And my date tonight's Tom Cruise."

"Isn't he a bit old for you? And married?" Lee asked coldly. He took the envelope containing his contract out of the inner pocket of his jacket, a battered leather that felt like a second skin, and passed it to Stan. Tiffani might be on the desk, but Stan had been with Claudia for twenty years now.

Stan glanced over the contract, his eyebrows lifting when he got to page four. "That's some serious money for someone like you. No offense, but you've been gone awhile."

Lee couldn't take offense at the truth. He was a nobody in Hollywood terms, and his stint on TV didn't count for much in the movie world. "Tell me about it."

Stan put the contract back into the envelope and handed it to Lee. "Okay, sit down. I'll get you in to see her."

"What?" Tiffani didn't rise from her chair, but her voice shot up an octave. "Stan, you can't let your friends walk in here like this."

"He's not a friend," Stan said, which stung. "He's someone I used to know."

"Stan…" Lee protested, guilt swamping him. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm groveling here. I'm an asshole and I know it, but by the time I had my head back in the game, I knew I wasn't coming back, so…"

"Except you did come back," Stan pointed out.

"Yeah," Lee said, his shoulders slumping as that depressing truth sank in. "I couldn't stay away, I guess."

Stan patted him on the arm. "I'll stop giving you grief in another decade, don't worry. Now let me see what I can do for you."

Tiffani grudgingly produced a cup of coffee, and Lee sank down into the soft embrace of a leather chair in Claudia's trademark emerald green. No one was giving him contemptuous looks after Stan's welcome, but flicking through the magazines on the table by his chair to give himself time to recover was a big mistake. Seeing Ash grin up at him, a grocery bag in his arms, the photograph captioned “Who is Ash Morden cooking a romantic dinner for? See page 32 for our guesses” was the visual equivalent of an ice cube slipped down the back of his neck.

Ash looked good. As toned and buff as ever, the white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up accentuating his muscular arms. Lee gave the man points for not trying to hide the fact that his hair was receding. It didn't show much. Ash's thick golden hair wouldn't go gray for years, most likely.

Yeah, Ash still had it. Lee picked moodily at a blister on his thumb and wondered if the same held true for him. By the time he was buzzed through to Claudia, he regretted everything he'd done since Ben's car had pulled up outside his house.

"Well, well, well," Claudia said by way of greeting. "Look at you."

"Prodigal son at your service," Lee said, keeping it light.

Claudia snorted and smoothed a wrinkle out of the sleeve of her suit. It was black, her blouse was white, and in her ears the huge emerald earrings she never took out sparkled as if they were alive. "If you were my son, you'd have remembered my birthday."

"You haven't changed. Not one little bit," Lee told her and walked around her desk to pull her to her feet and hug her, because he'd missed her.

She allowed the hug, then pushed him away, fussing with her jacket again. "I'll get older when I have time for it," she said tartly. "Now what's all this about you and Adler hooking up again?"

Lee laughed, shaking his head. "That's it? That's your first question? You don't want to know where I've been, how I've been, why I'm back?"

"I know why you're back." Claudia gave a one-shouldered shrug as eloquent as a speech. "Ben Adler waved one million dollars at you."

"I could use the money," Lee said, "but this is a one-shot deal. I'm not interested in acting, but he needs me for this, so I guess it can't hurt to do one little movie, right? Do you want to represent me?"

Claudia sat and picked up a slim gold pen, tapping it thoughtfully against her lips. "You'd think that the answer to that would be 'Hell, yes!' wouldn't you?" she asked. "I don't know though. Adler might need you to play the role because you were the original Ritchie—"

"Rob."

"Whatever. The original Rob, fine." Claudia pointed the pen at him like a gun. "Doesn't make you indispensable. If they can recast Darrin without Samantha noticing, they can get a different Rob past Steven York."

"How come you can remember _his_ name?" Lee complained. "And I'm not seeing your point. Why would Ben want to recast when I've said I'll do it? I'm not asking you to haggle over the contract or kicking up a fuss about the charitable donation that's part of the deal."

Claudia snorted and made it sound elegantly ladylike. "I bet you're not. You won the fucking lottery."

"So why don't you want a piece of the prize?" Lee demanded. "I'm not coming back into the business, if that's what's worrying you. We can write this up as a one-time deal. I need you to take care of all the stuff you used to do." He waved a vague hand around the office. "You know. Contracts, taxes, loopholes…"

"All the hard work," Claudia said drily. "Yeah, I could do that, but what's worrying me is the penalty clause I know is in the fine print. Adler's no fool, and he can leave you high and dry if he changes his mind about using you, and that leaves me flopping around on the beach too."

The image of Claudia, immaculate, exquisite Claudia, sand-encrusted and wet, made Lee grin, earning him a glare.

"I'm serious. You haven't acted in ten years. You're out of practice, totally out of shape…" Claudia gave him an appraising look. "You need to lose fifteen pounds of flab and tone up the arms and chest. Ash Morden wasn't the only beefcake on the show, remember? You had plenty of fans drooling over you. _He's_ stayed at the top of his game, though."

"I've been renovating my house," Lee said, discovering he still had an actor's innate vanity. "Up and down ladders, sawing wood, climbing around on roofs… I'm pretty damn toned, thank you very much."

"Yes?" Claudia inquired with a tilt of her head. She waved her hand at him imperiously. "Strip. Show me. Only your shirt. I don't like looking in the bakery window when I'm on a diet."

Lee gave her an incredulous look. "If that means what I think it does—"

"Yes, it does," Claudia said. "You're hot—for your age—but you're gay. It shouldn't matter because I never screw around with clients, but allow me to feel a moment of regret."

"Fine," Lee snapped and took off his leather jacket, draping it over the back of a chair. "I feel like there should be bump-and-grind music playing."

"This isn't sexy," Claudia said with a hint of a purr in her voice. "This is business."

Lee unbuttoned his shirt, a flush of embarrassment making the tips of his ears hot, and tossed it at the chair, where it caught and hung. "Well?"

Claudia pursed her lips. "Hmm. Tan lines. You've been working outside."

"Houses have these things called roofs and exterior walls."

"And eating doughnuts to keep you going," Claudia continued mercilessly. "I can see every single one." She leaned forward and poked the small bulge over the waistband of his pants, then pinched it. "Right _here_."

"You bitch," Lee said bitterly.

Claudia smiled, a supremely smug glint in her eyes as she sank back in her chair. "Oh, yeah."

"Look, I've got a couple of months, okay?"

"True, and it's not as if you're the first client I've had who needed some work." Claudia rummaged through a drawer of her desk. "I've got a list of people who could help you."

"No surgery, no Botox," Lee said before she could _nip/tuck_ him into submission. "I'll sign up with a personal trainer, watch what I eat, maybe get a voice coach, but Adler wants Rob Dolan ten years on and that's what he's going to get."

"That mean he wants you to look about five years older," Claudia said. "Right now, it's more like fifteen."

"So you're taking me on?" Lee asked, ignoring what she said because he couldn't argue with it.

"Put your shirt back on before someone walks in," Claudia said. "Yes, of course I am. What am I, nuts? But you move back here _right away_ and start slimming and schmoozing."

Lee shook his head as he retrieved his shirt. "No parties. Ben's playing up the missing-star routine, will-he-be-found-or-won't-he deal in the advance publicity."

"Smart," Claudia said with genuine appreciation. "Then we don't get you in with the current hot trainer. No, what we do is take care of you in-house."

Wild visions of exercising on a treadmill in the corner of Claudia's office filled Lee's head for a horrifying moment and made him fumble fastening the last button on his shirt. "Huh?"

Claudia stabbed a button on her phone. "Tiffani, tell Stan to get his ass in here."

Okay, that made sense. Stan was a walking commercial for a man whose body was a temple.

"Stan," Claudia said when Stan joined them, a quizzical look on his face, "Lee needs a place to stay for a few months and someone to ride his ass until it's as perky as yours."

Stan gave Lee an amused glance. "Is that right?"

"Are you interested in renting him the spare room at your place and devoting a few hours a day to giving him buns of steel? You'll get paid for it, of course." Claudia flicked a scornful look at Lee. "Not interesting in negotiating your contract, my ass. Adler can foot the bill for all of this."

Control of the situation slipped from his fingers like wet seaweed. This was what he'd wanted, this was what he'd come to the city to get, but now that he'd gotten it, it felt like surrender, not a wish granted.

He shivered reflexively as Claudia began to talk, her voice high and excited now, plans, instructions, names pouring out. Wishes cost you. If he'd learned one thing from _Hourglass_ , it was that.

_32 INT. YORK'S PENTHOUSE_

_York and Dolan enter, carrying groceries in paper bags, mid-argument._

_DOLAN I bumped into her! Total accident._

_YORK Was it an accident that her wallet ended up in your hand?_

_DOLAN No! Is that what you want to hear? No. I did what I'm good at. The_ only _thing I'm good at._

_Dolan dumps his groceries on the first table he comes to, the bag falling and apples spilling out. They watch them fall and bounce, but neither man moves to pick them up. This is serious. Dolan's face is averted. York puts his bag down too, more carefully, and places his hands on Dolan's shoulders, turning the younger man to face him._

_YORK (quietly) You gave it back. Without any word from me. That counts for something._

_DOLAN (shakes his head and twists out of York's grasp) She thanked me. Said I was a good boy and not many people would be that honest._

_YORK I know._

_DOLAN (voice breaking) She tried to_ pay _me._

_YORK (sighs) I was there, Rob. I know that, too._

_Dolan looks at him, pure misery in his eyes, and then starts to cry, silently, his arms wrapped around his body._

_YORK (helpless) Hey—_

_DOLAN (choked) I— For one moment I wanted to take it. Buy Julie something nice. Then I remembered she's gone._

_YORK Rob—_

_Dolan's face contorts, anger rising through his grief._

_DOLAN You didn't save her! What good are you and your damn hourglass if you couldn't save my sister?_ Why _didn't you save her?_

_He flings himself at York, arms flailing as he tries to punch and fight the bigger man, but York stands there, taking it all, and eventually Dolan stops, chest heaving, abject, miserable, and York silently draws him in for a hug, his expression unreadable._

_END OF ACT TWO_

_[Extract from the script of “Stolen Hour,” episode 1.03 of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 22, 1998]_

Chapter Eight

The room at the studios taken over for the press conference was air-conditioned but stuffy. Ash sat next to Ben on the small podium, a large screen behind them showing stills from various _Hourglass_ episodes in rotation, and tried to look genial and relaxed. It wasn't easy with his gaze flickering from one face to the next looking for Lee. Stupid of him. Ben had said he was keeping Lee under wraps—some promotion scheme involving pretending that Lee was missing that Ash hadn't paid attention to. It wouldn’t go down in legend like the search for Scarlett O'Hara, that was for sure, but it might drum up some interest in the movie. Either way, it meant Lee wouldn't be appearing.

It didn't stop Ash looking for him. Ben had muttered something about Lee's agent taking care of it all when Ash had asked where Lee was staying and added a warning to stay clear of her office in case a tabloid was having him followed.

That was about as likely as another Oscar, but Ash had accepted—more or less—that he wouldn’t see Lee before shooting started in a month's time. The past two months since Ben's out of the blue visit had been busy ones. Ash had shot a commercial for a wine he didn't drink and done another voice-over, this time as an animated cold germ on a kid's science show. Playing the villain for a change had been cool. Once word had leaked about the _Hourglass_ movie, his phone had been busy, but most of the calls were of the incredulous, what-the-fuck-are-you- _thinking_ kind rather than congratulatory.

_Hourglass_ , apparently, had sucked, and the movie would follow in its footsteps, a giant black hole of suckiness, easily big enough to swallow the careers of Adler, Ash, and anyone else involved.

No one remembered Lee, so no one cared if he joined the swirling journey to obscurity.

Ash's reaction to the lack of enthusiasm for the movie was apathy with a silent _I told you so_ running through it whenever he saw Ben. Adler's had been violent, destructive, and epic, but once he'd calmed down, he'd set up the press conference, and Ash had to admit, looking at the crowded room, plenty of people had turned up to stare at the train wreck.

Ash could ride this out. It wasn't as if it were a movie that would open in theaters across America, taken down a week later after playing to empty houses. _Hourglass_ —or whatever they'd finally decided to call the movie after changing their minds a dozen times—was going straight to DVD, with as few extra features as Ben could get away with. Ash was resigned to recording a commentary, crammed into a small room with Ben (possibly), Lee (if it was written into his contract the same way that it'd been included in Ash's), and maybe someone from the technical side to let the viewers in on any juicy CGI tricks.

His reputation would take a knock, but he could afford it because he wasn't that big a star. He was too useful to discard, with a good track record for knowing his lines and being professional and democratically friendly. In this business, being a brat or a diva got you the headlines but not the bread-and-butter work.

Ash sometimes thought it was a shame he'd been the one to get the big break, not Lee. He liked acting and he was good at it, but Lee had lived for it, his enthusiasm and passion impossible to miss.

Yet he'd walked away from it all, turned his back on it. Ash wanted to know why but was uncomfortably aware he knew the answer. What he needed to know was why Lee had stayed away after that first bitter anger had spent itself.

Of course, that was always assuming that it had.

A swell in the noise jerked him out of his abstraction and he smiled, an automatic response to applause, tilting his chin up and to the left to showcase his jaw line.

Ben got up and walked to the front of the stage, grabbing the microphone from its stand with a practiced flick of the wrist.

"So it's true what they say about sharks smelling blood from miles away," he said by way of a greeting. The assembled journalists gave him a mildly ironical titter of laughter. "Hey, I'm kidding, I'm kidding," Ben said with a wink. "I know you guys wouldn't knock a movie whose sole purpose is to make the dreams of little children—sick children, dying children—come true."

The silence that followed that was a sticky one. Ash, his expression studiously neutral, summed up the mood as resentful. Adler was cheating them of their prey with the dying kids angle and they didn't like it.

"Yes, that's right. I'm making this movie because my own little girl—who's happy and healthy and I thank God for that every day—asked me to. She found some old tapes of the original show, and what can I say? Who doesn't have a wish they want to come true? My little Samantha's wish was for her daddy to make a movie of her favorite show." Ash could only see Ben's profile, but the smile on his face was honey-sweet. "I made that wish come true, or I will when shooting starts on the first of June, but I didn't stop there. A big chunk of the profits from this movie—and if you stop slamming it before it's made, there might be some—will go to charity and—"

A man in the third row stood, his face set in skeptical lines. Ash recognized Tom Spokane, an independent and influential movie critic who prided himself on being impossible to manipulate or coerce, and cringed inwardly. "If you want to be a good guy, Ben, why not donate the proceeds from one of your big movies? The ones that made some _real_ money?"

Ben took a step back in pretended shock. "I had a successful movie? Why didn't one of you guys _tell_ me?"

It got him the first genuine laugh of the day, and Ash, who could read an audience's mood as easily as breathing, felt it become less hostile. Ben was too abrasive to be popular, but he was respected and feared, and in this town, that counted for more.

Ben shook his head. "You know, Tom, you're right. We could all give more than we do, and I'll make a promise right here and now that I'll match the donations from the movie dollar for dollar from my own pocket. How about that?"

Tom inclined his head in acknowledgment of Ben's adroit save. "I'll match that twenty bucks with twenty of my own," he said drily, and sat to some good-natured jeers from his colleagues.

"Any more questions?" Ben asked the crowd.

"Yeah. What's it called, anyway?"

Ben shrugged. "Why mess with what works? _Hourglass_ , of course. And bowing to pressure from the fans, we're bringing out the series in a boxed set to coincide with the movie's release, with the pilot episode released as a standalone next month to remind people of what made that little show so damn memorable. And the pilot won't cost people a penny, because it's coming as a free gift with _Vortex_ magazine."

Ash fought to keep his face from reflecting his surprise and annoyance. Those plans would have been put into motion months earlier, but Ben hadn't said anything about the releases. Not a word. Close-mouthed, manipulative son of a bitch… His second reaction was one of gratification. _Vortex_ wasn't a magazine he read, but it was well regarded in its niche, catering to fans of horror and sci-fi and covering everything from conventions to computer games. _Hourglass_ had qualified as fantasy, and the magazine had, as he recalled, been scathing about the show's cancellation.

"We can see you've got one of them back, but what truth is there in the rumor you've lost your other star?" a woman called out, her voice husky and commanding.

Ben shook his head. "If you mean Lee Simons, Kathy, I don't know how that rumor started—"

I do, Ash thought. You started it.

"But as you can see, it's completely false."

Ben turned and pointed at the screen, and Ash involuntarily twisted in his chair, following his director's command. The screen had frozen on a single image. Rob Dolan lay on the ground, crumpled, dead, cradled in Steve York's arms, one of the iconic moments of a show that had rarely risen above the mundane.

"He died on the show and the power of the Hourglass saved him," Ben said softly, every word charged with meaning. "I guess miracles do happen twice."

The image flickered, dissolved, a new one replacing it, Rob alive, grinning, his long dark hair wild around his face, hands on his hips. It was from the scene in the final episode when he'd told Steve he was leaving, and a moment later, that smile had faded, but the camera had captured it here, unchanging, eternal. Slowly, that image gave way to another, not Rob, but Lee, Lee as he was now, Ash guessed, his heart pounding, his ears roaring. Older, his hair much shorter, a frown creasing his forehead, but still Lee.

"Lee Simons, folks. Not lost, but found," Ben said, and Lee walked onto the stage with an indifferent confidence that looked genuine. Ash let the appreciative applause for a nice _coup de théâtre_ wash over him and forced weak legs to support him as he stood. He’d have to walk over to Lee, shake his hand, pull him into a friendly hug… God. He'd never hated Ben Adler more.

He took two steps forward, three, his training allowing him to paste a smile on and keep his demeanor relaxed, then stretched out his hand to Lee. The difference between the memories of Lee he'd been turning over in his hands, a miser's gold to be fondled, and the man before him were breathtaking, but he recognized Lee. Oh God, yes, he did. The mouth hadn't changed, lips he'd tasted and felt crushed against his, and Lee's eyes were the same amber brown, but ten years had been lost. Ash suffered a pang of fierce regret and knew he was to blame. He'd made his choice between love and stardom and left Lee behind.

Lee smiled at him, cool and polite. Then their hands touched, sending a flash of heat through Ash, because those hands had been all over him once and he couldn't help the hope that rose. Maybe this was the second chance he'd never thought he'd get; maybe after this press conference was over they could go for a drink, drive back to his place, swim, talk—oh, why was he trying to kid himself? He didn't want to do anything but get naked with Lee and discover every change, every difference in the body he'd once known as well as his own.

Lee must have read Ash's thoughts, because his eyes narrowed and hope became certainty for Ash. They'd never been able to keep their hands off each other. Ten years wouldn't change that—twenty, thirty years wouldn't.

Ash smiled warmly and opened his mouth to say something for the watching, waiting audience.

He never got the chance. Lee smashed his fist into Ash’s mouth with a grinding force that rocked Ash's head back, the pain arriving a moment after the salt taste of blood, which didn't make any sense, but neither did Lee punching him like that.

He stayed on his feet, his hand rising, not to return the blow but to touch his bleeding lips, still stunned, incredulous. Ben was cursing under his breath, a fixed smile on his face, and the crowd was yelling out questions, flashes going off like miniature fireworks, but Ash could only stare at Lee, who was pale, his eyes glittering with anger.

Lee stepped in closer, before his arms were grabbed by two security guards who'd come rushing onto the stage. " _That's_ for inviting me to your fucking premiere," Lee hissed low enough that only Ash heard.

Ash took the handkerchief that Ben thrust at him, and held it to his mouth.

"Goddamn actors, with their goddamn temperaments," Ben muttered. He gestured to the guards to release Lee. "Don't worry, boys. Mr. Simons isn't going to do that again." His gaze skewered Lee. "Are you?"

Lee shook his head, the anger hidden behind the professional mask of an actor now. "Saying hello to an old friend," he said, his voice carrying. He turned to face the crowd, smiling widely. "That's from one of the first scenes in the movie," he said. "The reconciliation comes later. Hope you liked the sneak peek, folks."

He threw his arm around Ash's shoulders and they stood side by side and let themselves be photographed. Ash could feel the minute tremors shaking Lee's body, and the hand clutching his arm was biting in deeply enough to leave marks, but he played along with it all, conscious of Ben's agitation and the need to keep up appearances.

He must have pulled it off.

The articles printed the next day would call it a cheap trick or an amusing variation on the normal promotion stunts, but none of them would call it a fight or a gauntlet thrown down.

  1. _EXT. Dusk. Beach._



_York and Dolan are sitting on the sand, their backs to a weathered log tossed up by the tide._

_DOLAN (encouraging) You did good today. Hell, you saved an entire plane and God knows how many people on the ground._

_York scoops up a handful of sand and lets it trickle through his fingers, doesn't reply._

_DOLAN Steve? What's wrong?_

_YORK You really want to know? Yeah, I saved this many lives, this many days (holds up his cupped palm, filled with sand, already trickling out) and I lost a day of mine. I can't pick out one single grain of sand, so why does it feel so—_

_DOLAN Like you've lost something?_

_YORK (turns to him, troubled) Yeah. I should be happy. What I wished for today (stares down at his forearm, where the hourglass is visible to them both) was huge. And what's a day, right? I'd probably have slept in, watched TV, maybe gotten drunk or lucky in the evening—but the point is, I'll never know. Maybe with that day I'd have done something important. Met someone special. Hell, it doesn't matter. It was MY day and it's gone and I—I don't know how many more times I can DO this._

_DOLAN (puts his hand over York's forearm for a moment, over the hourglass, holding on, anchoring his friend). I know you. As many times as you need to. And I'll be there helping you every step of the way._

_[Extract from the script of “Flying into Darkness,” episode 2.06 of_ Hourglass _. Air date November 2, 1999]_

Chapter Nine

"You punched him?" Stan said. "You punched Ash Morden in the _face_?"

Lee held up his right hand and made a fist. His knuckles weren't red, but he experienced a twinge of soreness when he flexed his fingers. "With this very hand. I’ll never wash it again."

Stan shook his head, then took a long drink from the bottle in his hand. It wasn't beer but some weird protein/vitamin shake he swore did miracles when it came to keeping him healthy. Lee had taken one sip of the green-tea-flavored variety and gagged. He'd get his protein from a steak and his vitamins from whatever came with it as a side, thank you very much.

"He'll sue you."

Lee wasn't interested in a legal fight, and he doubted Ash was either. "He won't."

"Man like that, he's probably got his face insured for a million bucks."

Lee snorted. "Yeah, right. He's not _that_ good-looking."

Except he was. Lee had seen him on that stage and for one brief, insane moment he'd wanted to kiss that smiling, familiar mouth, not strike it with all the pent-up sorrow and rage he was carrying powering the punch. Ash hadn't only aged well—he hadn't aged at all. Probably had work done on a regular basis. Or maybe he'd sold his soul to the devil. Satan could do a roaring trade around Hollywood.

"You shouldn't have done it," Stan said with a finality Lee couldn't argue with. "Could have cost you the job."

Stan's open-plan apartment was like a stage set, all ivory walls, pale gold wooden floors, and black leather furniture, abstract art on the walls providing splashes of vivid color. It took some getting used to, but after a few weeks of staring at it, Lee decided the painting over the fireplace was supposed to be a fire, which made sense in a way. Even if it was all blues and yellows.

Right now, the apartment was a refuge from angry voices—Ben's mostly—yelling at him, and babbled questions from reporters he had no answers for. If Stan kept this line of conversation going for much longer, though, the apartment would be one more trap to escape.

"Adler can't fire me. He needs me."

Stan arched his eyebrows. "Uh-huh. Because you're so damn irreplaceable."

Lee slumped back on the couch, the leather yielding to cushion him. Nice couch. Nice leather too, soft enough that sitting on it in shorts and a T-shirt was as sensual an experience as a massage. If he did the movie, he could put a couch like this in his house, hell, one in every room, and sprawl out on them naked.

"If he wants the original cast—"

"He doesn't care," Stan corrected him. "It's his little girl who wanted you, and that was months ago. She's probably not interested anymore and Adler's going through with it because he'll look like an idiot if he pulls out."

"No, she's still interested," Lee said with a sigh. "The last thing Ben said to me before he kicked me out was that if I pulled a stunt like that in front of her when she visited the set, he'd burn down my house. I think he meant it."

"I know he did," Stan said with deep conviction. "That man's scary." He walked to the kitchen area and rinsed out his bottle before putting it in the recycle bin under the sink. "So do you want to tell me why you did it?"

Lee closed his eyes and replayed the punch in his head. Ash's smile, the electric touch of his hand, like the buzz from a static charge, but more intense… That hadn't been what had brought his defenses down with a crash, leaving him so exposed and vulnerable that attack was his only option. No, it was the sure and certain knowledge that Ash could still hurt him, _would_ hurt him. When Ash had smiled, Lee had always yielded, shaping himself to Ash's needs like the couch he was lying on had shaped itself to the contours of his body. He'd thought he'd gotten past that surrender, but apparently not.

The punch had felt good, so fucking good. When he'd walked away from Ash a decade earlier, he'd hit walls, started fights in bars, collected bruises like trophies, until common sense kicked in, but the punch had reminded him of how good it felt to lash out. Destructive, but so tempting. His savage elation had faded in the face of the bewildered hurt in Ash's summer-sky blue eyes and the tentative, wincing touch of Ash's fingers to his swollen, bleeding mouth.

"Payback," he said eventually. "He knows why. He won't do anything."

"If someone reports it—"

"We're actors. They think it was a stunt."

"They're not stupid." Stan perched on the end of the couch nearest to Lee's feet. He was dressed in black jeans and a pale gray T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and muscular chest. Despite his depressed state, Lee checked him out automatically, knowing Stan wouldn't mind an appreciative look. "Morden's mouth must have been a mess."

"Stunts, stage blood, movie magic… We're actors and they don't know what's real and what isn't when it comes to us."

"So are you gonna make the Statue of Liberty disappear for your next trick, Mr. Magic Man?" Stan asked wryly.

"Maybe I'll make myself vanish. One puff of smoke and a shower of sparks." Lee stared up at the white ceiling, a subtle few shades different from the ivory walls. "I shouldn't have come back."

"I know you and Morden had a thing back in the day," Stan said, clearly choosing his words carefully. "I'm guessing it didn't end well?"

"How do you know?" Lee demanded, pushing himself up to a sitting position and meeting Stan's calm gaze. "No, don't tell me. Claudia."

Stan shrugged and patted Lee's foot. "She told me to take care of you. I couldn't do that if I didn't know the facts."

"She told you to give me a place to stay and keep me away from pizza and doughnuts," Lee said. "I don't recall the bit where you step in as my therapist too."

"Therapy isn't my thing," Stan said. "I get mad, I take it out on a punching bag. I get sad, I go to the beach and watch the waves for a few hours. Well, I do that when I don't feel sad too. I like watching them."

They ran on the sand before breakfast with the pink light of dawn brightening to a mellow gold, but while Lee was in one of the cafes eating a Stan-approved egg-white omelet with fruit and yogurt on the side, Stan usually stayed on the sand, staring out at the shifting colors of the Pacific until Lee rejoined him.

"That's what I did," Lee said, trying for an innocent smile. "But instead of a punching bag, I used Ash's face."

Stan rubbed his hands over his smooth head as if he were trying to scrub away his frustration with Lee. "I still want to know _why_ you lost it with Morden like that. What went down with you two anyway?"

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it." That verged on pouting, and he wasn't surprised when Stan gave him a look that only friendship saved from being disgusted. "But since it's you asking…"

"Good boy," Stan said, which was what he said when Lee had completed a four-mile run or turned down a beer. It was amazing how much Lee craved his approval. Maybe he'd missed an audience's applause more than he knew.

"Claudia knows most of it. I had to tell her I was leaving and not looking for work after the show ended and Adler stopped talking to me, and she wanted details."

"The lady likes to know what's going on," Stan agreed. "I would've appreciated being told you were packing your bags myself."

They hadn't talked much about the way that Lee had left without a word to Stan apart from a message on his answering machinepromising to call. Lee braced himself for a dig or two about his broken promise, but Stan looked at him, waiting.

"Man, I'm so sorry." Lee put every ounce of sincerity he had into the apology. "It's a long time overdue, but I mean it."

"Forgiven," Stan said and patted Lee's foot again before sliding down from his perch on the arm of the couch to sit on it. Lee drew his feet back to make room for him. "I don't get why you never told me about you and Ash," Stan said. "I knew, by the way. I knew before Claudia, but I was waiting for you to share and you never did."

"Back then you knew?" Lee's mouth hung open for a moment in shock. "God, was there anyone who _didn't_ know? We thought we were being so fucking careful."

"You didn't do too badly," Stan said with a shrug. "I didn't hear any gossip beyond the usual 'are they/aren't they' crap so I guess you did better than most couples hooking up on the sly."

"So what gave us away?" Lee demanded.

"Didn't someone once say that love's like a cold—when you've got a bad case of either, you can't hide it?" Stan shrugged again. "Guess you had a terminal case, huh?"

"I did. Ash got over it." He heard the bitterness twisting through his voice. "To be fair, when we started, it was for the sex, no strings, and I didn't mind that we both had to date women for the look of it. I accepted that. Then it changed. I thought it'd changed for him too, so when he said he loved me and he didn't want to be with anyone else, I believed him."

"And?" Stan prompted when Lee stopped talking.

"And he got that movie offer," Lee said flatly. "A star is born. I was happy for him. I said I'd go with him up to Vancouver. I wasn't in any rush to look for another job and I had plenty saved up from _Hourglass_. I offered to rent us an apartment—"

He paused, his throat tightening. "Should've seen the panic in his eyes. He didn't want me near him, hanging on to him, going to parties with him. He didn't want people talking, putting two and two together and coming up with four legs in a bed. He didn't want _me_. So I left."

"Jesus, what an asshole," Stan said, disgust plain on his face and in his voice.

Perversely, Lee found himself defending Ash. "It was a great role. I don't blame him for wanting to do it and being scared of losing it if people found out he was gay. It's looser now, but it's still not easy coming out unless you're old enough that no one gives a shit."

"Yeah, but it sounds like he could've handled it better."

"No arguments there," Lee agreed. "I don't have much objectivity, you know? I've brooded over it for ten fucking years and I don't know if I'm remembering it right. Ever thought about something so much you rub the colors off it so it's this smudged mess? Or replayed a conversation to make it come out right and you start to believe the tidied-up version?"

"Who hasn't?"

"Well, it's like that with me. I wanted to give him a chance today. Talk to him calmly, clear the air so we could work together on this movie without it being awkward."

"And then you saw him." The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the window and into Stan's face. He stood and walked over to pull down the wooden blinds.

"And then I saw him." Lee sighed. "So much for talking things out calmly. I lost it. Totally. I guess I'm lucky he didn't punch me back."

"Hold that thought." Stan let the blind down with a clatter of wood. "Because the man parked his car across the street and he's coming this way."

Lee turned his head sharply. "What the hell?"

"Want me to stay or go?" Stan asked. "If things get sticky, you might need a witness."

"This is your place," Lee said. "I'm not kicking you out, and if Ash tries, I'll—"

"Oh, yeah, this is going to go well," Stan muttered under his breath. He walked over to Lee and poked him in the chest, something Lee wouldn't have taken from anyone else. "Listen, hothead, I don't want any trouble and I had a sparring session planned, but I didn't want to leave you if you needed to talk. Something tells me the person you need to chat with is on his way up."

Lee bit his lip until it stung and stopped himself.

"If you need me, call, and I'll be back from the gym in ten, traffic permitting. Okay?" Stan said.

Lee didn't answer with anything but a hug, one Stan returned with a generosity that was typical of the man, holding Lee close until Lee patted Stan's back in a signal to break apart.

"You'll be fine," Stan said with reassuring certainty. "Remember you've got to work with the guy. Keep it civil, stay cool."

Civil and cool? With Ash? Lee wasn't sure that was possible, but he nodded obediently.

_ACT FOUR_

_FADE IN_

_56 EXT AIRPORT TERMINAL_

_DOLAN You've gotta do it, Stevie, you've gotta make the wish. If Lester gets on that plane, with no medical staff on board, he'll die. He needs to have his heart attack here, on the ground, where he'll be close to a hospital. If he dies, his family loses every chance they had to be happy. They need him around._

_York (irritably) I know, okay. I know. And don't call me Stevie._

_York stares at his forearm and we see the golden swirl of the HOURGLASS. The bustle of the terminal FADES and we hear York's voice, weary but determined as another day of his life slips away._

_YORK I wish that Lester Pinchon would miss his flight to Boston._

_Alura's voice rings out._

_ALURA Wish granted._

_[Extract from the script of “Heartfelt” episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date January 19, 1999]_

Chapter Ten

Ash knocked on Lee's door—well, technically it belonged to the guy Lee was staying with, but Ash wasn't in the mood for details—and waited for the door to be opened with an impatience he couldn't hide, tapping his foot in time with the thud of his heartbeat. He'd seen Lee's roomie already, all smooth dark skin and muscles, with a piercing stare, who'd nodded to him on the stairs and said in passing, "Mr. Morden? Next floor, first door on the left. Lee knows you're here."

Ash hoped that his piss-poor memory for faces wasn't failing him and that he'd met Lee's old friend Stan, because Stan had been straight if memory served. If he was wrong and that was Lee's current partner, he had serious competition.

Not that he was here looking to start anything up with Lee again, of course. That ship had sailed before Lee had rammed a fist into Ash's mouth. Ash explored the still swollen portion of his lip with a wince, using the pain to bolster his resolve as the door opened.

"I think we need to talk," Ash said before Lee could say something stupid, like tell him to go away after he'd driven all the way across town to do this.

"Talk or fight?" Lee shook his head, a sneer twisting his mouth. "No, fighting's not your thing, is it? You don't like it when things get messy."

"I'm not here to break your nose, if that's what you mean." Ash glanced along the short hallway, grateful that it was empty. "Do we want to do this out here?"

"No, I guess not." Lee stepped back and swept his arm out with a flourish. "Welcome to Stan's not so humble abode. Except it's a slum compared to your place, right?"

"Mine's bigger, that's all," Ash said absently, closing the door behind him, most of his attention on Lee, not their surroundings. On stage there'd been too much going on for him to look his fill. "You cut your hair."

"In ten years? I cut it a couple of times. Washed it too."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I cut off the curls. Ben wants me to grow it out though." Lee shoved his hand through his hair, rumpling it. "Feels weird to have this much of it. I've been keeping it pretty short."

"Why?" The conversation was verging on surreal as they danced around anything important, but Ash was genuinely curious. He'd always envied Lee that lustrous mass of curls that Lee managed to make look sexy without being overly feminine. It had helped that there were dozens of rock bands around at the time with the same look and that Lee had been younger, of course. Ash eyed Lee and tried to picture him with his former hairstyle. It was surprisingly difficult. Lee had lost the shine of youth, but he looked more interesting now. Rougher. Bigger, though Lee was still a couple of inches shorter than Ash.

"It wouldn't suit me now," Lee said, reading his mind as easily as ever, "and it'd get in the way when I worked."

"Why? What are you doing these days?"

They were standing in the middle of the room, a few feet apart. Ash wished Lee would get them both a drink, invite him to sit down, anything. This still felt like an argument, despite the polite, stiff chitchat being swapped.

"I'm renovating my grandfather's house. He left it to me when he died."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Ash said automatically. "I know how close you were to him."

"I don't think I ever mentioned him to you," Lee said, a flush rising in his face. "So save the fake sympathy."

It was like turning over a rock to expose a squirming mass of bugs with hundreds of legs. Ash held up a hand in placation but refused to back down. "Uh, yeah, you did. I suck at names, but you told me about growing up with him and getting lost in the woods by the house once and the beach nearby…stuff like that."

"I don't remember."

Lee was pouting now. Ash couldn't decide if that was cute or ridiculously immature. His lip chose that moment to throb, so he went with the latter.

"Grow up. And when we start shooting, keep your goddamn hands to yourself," he said shortly. "That's pretty much all that I wanted to say. I'm done."

Ash had the satisfaction of seeing Lee's mouth hang open for a moment, surprise plain on his face. Oh, so Lee had expected this scene to go on longer? Interesting.

"That's it?" Lee said when Ash reached the door. "No apology?"

"From you about this?" Ash asked, turning his head and tapping a finger against his cut mouth. "I should make you grovel, I guess, but what the hell. Have that one on me for old times' sake."

"You arrogant fuck," Lee said. "God, you haven't changed."

" _I'm_ arrogant? You ruined Ben's press conference because you couldn't wait until we were someplace private to fight. You owe me for going along with your pathetic cover story. You owe me big time."

"Yeah?" Ash held his ground as Lee strode over to him, quivering with fury. "You're lucky I stopped at one punch, buddy."

"No," Ash corrected him, deliberately goading Lee. "You're lucky I let you throw it. And by the way, I was assuming you'd miss. You always did need a stand-in for the fight scenes."

Knowing how Lee would react to the gibe made it easy to block the punch, aimed at his stomach this time, but Lee didn't stop with one blow, lashing out with all the accuracy of a toddler in a tantrum, but strong enough to do some damage.

Ash found himself backed up against the door, Lee crowding close, his breath warm against Ash's face, and there was only one way this would end and they'd known it the moment that door closed and left them together in a room.

Kissing hurt with his lip swollen and tender, but Ash wasn't interested in holding back. He'd waited too long for this.

"God, I've missed you," he muttered against Lee's mouth as Lee said something unintelligible and grabbed a handful of Ash's ass. "You have no idea how much."

That was the wrong thing to say. Lee stiffened, jerked his head back—without relinquishing his hold on Ash's ass—and snarled, "Whose fault was that?"

"Yours," Ash told him. "You left town, remember."

"Huh? That's not how I remember it at all. You told me not to come with you. You were—"

"Can we talk about this later?" Ash begged him. Lee still smelled the same and it was driving him crazy, long-dormant responses waking up and reminding him of how good it had been when they'd fucked this worked up. Lust or anger or both driving them, it didn't matter when the end result was the same.

Lee licked his lips, a quick swipe of his tongue across them that left them glistening. "After what, Ash? After we fuck?"

"You know we will," Ash said. "I don't care what went wrong between us or whose fucking fault it was—you can't say the sex didn't work because it _did_. Always."

"If we do this, it's a one-time-only," Lee said. "I want you out of here before the cum dries on the sheets, you got that?"

"Quick and dirty?" Ash asked with a groan of pure anticipation, reasonably certain Lee would change his mind about the rest of it once they got naked. "God, okay. Yes."

"I _knew_ you didn't want to talk," Lee said between his teeth and stepped back after a bad-tempered shove that slammed Ash against the door. Ash stared at him, hope and an incipient hard-on dwindling rapidly. So maybe it wouldn’t be that easy, after all.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Lee demanded. It was a good question, but one Ash wasn't sure he had an answer for. "You ditch me ten years ago because I'm an embarrassment, a career-wrecker, and now you turn up and expect me to drop my pants and bend over like one of the starstruck groupies you used to let blow you in any restroom with a door that locked?"

Ash swallowed, tasting regret as much as the shot of whiskey he'd drunk before coming over.

"It wasn't like that."

"It was exactly like that," Lee told him. "You don't want to remember it because it makes you look bad, and we can't have that, can we? Golden boy Ash Morden using his naïve younger co-star for sex, then dumping him along with the show and heading for the big time doesn't look good in the headlines."

"I didn't want you with me in Vancouver because I needed space," Ash said. Trite but true. "You were all I thought about back then. If I was in bed with you, I was wondering if we had time to go again. If we weren't, I was making plans to get you there."

"Jesus, Ash, we had more than that going on!"

"Did we?" Ash shrugged, knowing he was being a jerk but wanting some payback for the way Lee had played him. "Seems to me you felt pretty much the same way."

Lee shook his head, prowling around the room restlessly with quick, uneven steps. Ash remembered—fondly—how difficult Lee had found keeping still when he was worked up, unless the role called for it. He took advantage of Lee's distraction and stepped away from the door, resting his hands on the back of one of the two huge black leather couches in the room. Sitting uninvited felt risky.

"Did I want to nail your ass every chance I got?" Lee demanded, coming to a halt a few feet away from Ash. "Yes! But it wasn't all I wanted to do. I wanted—I wanted time with you. Talking, hanging out, no goddamn shooting schedule eating up fifteen hours out of every day or more until I couldn't remember what month it was, let alone what day of the week."

Ash’s defenses crumbled in the face of Lee's intensity. "I would've liked that too, but we never had the chance. Maybe if you'd still been around when I got back from location—but you left before that."

He didn't touch Lee, who looked like a man waiting for an excuse to explode into violence, but he held out his hand in appeal for a moment or two. It was a gesture he'd learned in acting classes and used as Steve York in a scene with an angry Rob more than once, but it didn't make it less genuine. Ash was too used to working his mannerisms into a scene to notice when the reverse happened. Ultimately, it all came from him, after all.

"I looked for you, you know," he told Lee. "Drove around all the places we used to go, asked your agent where you were. I tried to find you after that last fight, and when I got back into town after the movie shoot I tried again, but you'd gone."

"I didn't want anyone finding me, but I guess part of me was hoping you would," Lee admitted grudgingly. "I'm not sure how well it would've gone if you had, though."

Ash smiled at him, inviting Lee to smile back. "Ten years later and your first reaction is to punch me? I'm guessing it wouldn't have worked out well at all."

Lee sighed and walked around the couch to fling himself down into it. He still had an actor's sense of staging, Ash noted dispassionately, following suit when Lee rolled his eyes and gestured to Ash to sit beside him. The couch was sinfully soft without making Ash feel as if he were being eaten alive by it, and he relaxed.

"I thought I was over you," Lee said. "I thought we could work together, but when I saw you on that stage, it all came flooding back."

"You handled it about as well as I did when we broke up, so don't beat yourself up over it." Ash took a deep breath and went for honesty. Lee deserved it after that apology—and it _had_ been an apology, lame but genuine. "I was scared, okay? Being outed is still something I'm not ready to deal with, but back then it was my biggest nightmare."

Lee hunched up a shoulder indifferently. "Still? _I'm_ out. Have been for years. It didn't seem worthwhile keeping it a secret once I'd stopped acting. I've met a few people who think I'm going to burn in hell and a few more who wanted to hand out some divine retribution on the spot, but mostly no one outside the gossip columns and the Bible Belt cares these days, Ash. My landlady set me up on a blind date with her nephew in one town."

"They care if you're famous," Ash said. "Maybe you were lucky, I don't know, but if I come out, I'm unemployable and we both know it. You've gotten this job because Ben's got a bug up his ass about the original cast, but if you go around telling reporters you're gay, say goodbye to a comeback. I won't stop you, because this movie's going to die a slow death, but the publicity you get us won't be the good kind. You'll get hate mail, obscene calls, God knows what else."

Lee gave him a stony stare. "I'm not changing who I am to make some jerks back off, but I don't plan on taking out a full-page ad in _Variety_ either, because it's no one's fucking business but mine. If it comes up, I'll be honest. And I don't _want_ to come back. I want to get one million for a few weeks’ work and use it to finish restoring my house."

"And what happens after that?" Ash demanded. "You're an actor, Lee, not a fucking handyman or decorator."

"I haven't acted since I left and I haven't missed it."

"You're lying," Ash said with conviction. "You've missed it and you've missed me. If you play it safe, you can get it all back. We were good together, Lee. Don't tell me you're not tempted."

"Sneak around meeting you in hot-sheet motels or blowing you in a trailer between takes? That was enough when I was a kid—"

"You were twenty-three, not some piece of jailbait!" Ash said.

"Whatever. I'm older now. I want—I want to settle down."

"What the hell for?" Ash asked him, honestly puzzled. "Okay, so now you're, what, thirty-two, thirty-three, right? Big deal! That's nothing. You still look hot, you always were a better actor than me—this is your shot at making it big. A long shot, sure, but more than most people get. Why would you want to live alone in some dead-end town in a house with dry rot and termites when you could be here with me?"

"Because the house—and it doesn't have either of those things—is real. This life isn't. What you're offering is sex. I can get that anywhere."

"Bullshit," Ash said flatly. "The film industry is real enough for the thousands of people behind the scenes and it's real for us too. You were part of it. You know what's involved and how much hard work's involved. I'd lose ten pounds a week shooting if I wasn't careful, burn it off, sweat it off.”

"Then hit craft services for your favorite doughnuts and put every pound back on," Lee said, a reminiscent smile on his face.

"At least I wasn't rotting my teeth with jelly beans," Ash countered.

Lee grinned. "You want to know something? I didn't like them. Never ate them. I thought a star needed a gimmick, you know?"

Ash choked on incredulous laughter. "You had fans sending them to you by the fucking truckload, you asshole!"

"I told them not to," Lee said. "I can't help it if they never listened."

Ash couldn't stop laughing. "How many bags do you think you'll get this time around?"

"I don't know." Lee didn't sound amused now. "Those fans were upset when the show ended, you know."

"Yeah, I saw some of the letters and petitions," Ash said. "I couldn't understand why they cared so much. It's not as if we were doing anything groundbreaking."

"People like what they like," Lee said, "and those people liked us."

"I liked us too," Ash said.

Lee gave him an incredulous look, and Ash felt momentarily embarrassed. "Is that a pick-up line? Jesus, Ash, I preferred you when you cut to the chase and told me to kneel down and blow you."

"It wasn't always that way around," Ash reminded him. "I did plenty of time on my knees too, remember?"

"I remember a lot of things," Lee told him. "I didn't spend the last few years brooding over a picture of you, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about you now and then. Once called one blond guy 'Ash' when I was fucking him, and didn't that piss him off."

"You got back on the horse pretty quickly, did you?" Ash asked, knowing that he didn't have the right to be jealous—he hadn't exactly been celibate himself, after all—but still finding it hard to deal with the image of Lee with another man.

"I screwed everyone who offered for a few months before I realized how pathetic I was." Lee grimaced. "Ever woken up with someone and you don't know their name?"

"Uh…" There were some names he'd forgotten by the time the person had left the room.

"I was at the point where if I _did_ know their name, it was more of a problem." Lee chewed the edge of a fingernail with a nervous energy that made Ash feel tired. "Rock bottom. I went from that extreme to no sex for months and finally found a middle ground where I dated, but nothing serious. Hit a dry spell recently, but that's mostly because the house took all my energy, and then when I moved back here Stan's been training me like I'm in a remake of fucking _Rocky_ or something."

Ash absorbed the highlights of Lee's sex life without commenting until he could say something that wouldn't provoke another fight.

"I screwed you up, didn't I?"

Lee sighed. "I fell in love with you. Shit happens when you let yourself go there. I had to find that out eventually."

"And now you hate me?" Ash asked tentatively. He was fairly sure Lee didn't, but something inside him, the flair for the dramatic, would've preferred it to indifference.

"I thought I did, but no, I guess not." Lee met Ash's gaze calmly. "You're still hot, but I've had hotter and you're showing some wear and tear. I built you up into this heartless monster, but I was wrong about that. You were a fame-hungry wannabe, too scared to be honest with anyone, including me. This town's full of men like you. It was stupid of me to fall for one of them, but you know what they say about love being blind. I guess in my case, it was terminally stupid, too."

"That was convincing," Ash said when he'd controlled the urge to snap something equally hurtful back. Wear and tear? What the _hell_? He stood, deciding to leave with some of his dignity intact. "Next time, make that speech _before_ you shove your tongue down my throat."

"I was seeing how far you'd let me go," Lee said, getting up and into Ash's face. "Nothing more."

Ash patted Lee's cheek gently, condescendingly, grinning when Lee snarled and jerked his head away. "You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. Call me when you're ready to admit you're full of shit."

"Call _me_ when you want an honest opinion about how old you look," Lee said. "Happy to oblige."

Ash rolled his eyes and left before he did something more stupid than expecting Lee to forgive him.

_3 INT. YORK'S PENTHOUSE - EVENING_

_York's talking animatedly on the phone to a woman, Suzanne, when there's a knock at the door._

_YORK Yeah, Saturday works great for me… Hold on, there's someone at the door._

_York opens the door, sees Dolan and REACTS. Shock, joy, confusion._

_YORK [into phone] Suzanne? I'll call you back._

_He ends the call and drops the phone down on the table by the door, not looking at it but at Dolan._

_[Extract from the script for the movie_ Hourglass _(2010).]_

Chapter Eleven

The first day of shooting brought back memories of the first day of school. Ben's traditional canvas chair was stiff, no give in it, like his shoes had always been in early September, chafing his feet, too used to the soft clasp of well-worn sneakers or going bare. He settled back in it, studying the daily call sheet, then stood again a moment later. Too much to do to sit. He was directing and producing this sucker, with help from a well-trained team, sure, but it would be a shitload of work.

The script was, well, it was okay. He'd make changes as they went along, always did. The first draft—and the second and the third—had gone out to the cast, who by God had better know their lines because they were on a tight schedule here, and he expected them to keep up with any alterations. He wouldn’t be patient with fluffed takes and actors getting into character with hours of preparation and fancy-ass visualization techniques. This wasn't fucking Shakespeare, and he'd wasted enough time on this project already. He never indulged his actors. Let them insist on two hours set aside for meditation or handmade chocolates flown in from Switzerland on another set. _His_ actors worked their tails off and did it like professionals.

A glass bowl of jelly beans, three colors showing, yellow, green, and black, caught his eye. Lee's jelly beans. He chewed his lip. Should he let Simons have them? Did they count as an indulgence when they weren't the fancy, expensive kind? He absently scooped up a handful, cramming them into his mouth and reducing them to a sugary, sticky glop within a few moments. When he'd decided the time spent sorting out the colors Lee liked was time wasted, a thin, quivering-with-nerves PA popped up beside him, gray eyes blinking behind huge glasses.

"Are they okay? Did I get the colors right?"

Ben swallowed what was in his mouth and ran his tongue over his teeth, checking for remnants. "You did this?"

She nodded, clutching a clipboard to her chest, wisps of light-brown hair escaping her high ponytail. God, was she old enough to be working for him? Who had hired her?

"Name?" Ben asked, not that he'd remember it an hour later. PAs came and went. Mostly they went.

"Natasha Southwood."

Natasha? What the hell had her parents been thinking? It didn't suit her at all.

"That was kind of you," Ben said. "Lots of initiative, I see." She beamed at him. "Don't do it again or you're fired." He took another handful of jelly beans and walked off before she burst into tears, noting details he wanted to change about the penthouse set in the center of the soundstage. What worked for a real room didn't always work for a set. He spotted an area that would be tricky to light and shoot in but too full of potentially interesting angles to ignore.

There was no sign of his leading men yet, both of them still in their trailers or makeup, he guessed. He'd give them five minutes, then send someone to look for them. If he was cruel, he'd make it Natasha. Nothing like trying to pry an actor out of his shell to separate the wimps from the hard-asses.

Samantha had begged to come to set and meet her heroes (excuse him while he found a bucket to puke in) but first days were no place for children. He’d be yelling a _lot_ today. He was looking forward to it.

The read-through a week earlier had been a disaster. Morden and Simons had sat as far apart as was humanly possible at a round table and said their lines to each other with an icy politeness that robbed them of meaning, or in a bored mumble. Sure, no one expected a cold reading to be Oscar material, but the tension had been like grit on lettuce. The only time they'd behaved like professionals was when the script called for them to talk to someone else. For those scenes, they'd taken their heads out of their asses and given him something resembling a glimmer of hope this movie would be halfway watchable.

Simons was rusty as hell, of course, but he'd told Ben privately he was taking voice lessons and Ben wasn't worried about him. Going back to a role like this was like putting on an old pair of slippers.

What was giving Ben's ulcers a workout was the realization the two of them weren't going to be sensible and fuck each other blind discreetly, or better yet, keep it zipped and concentrate on what they were getting paid to do. Instead, they were giving him a fucking soap opera of hurt feelings, melodrama, and through-the-roof sexual tension.

The way they'd looked at each other at the read-through… _Jesus, get a room_ , Ben had wanted to scream at them. If they couldn't see that they were eye-fucking holes in each other with those dagger-sharp glares, well, no one else in the room was that blind. Maybe he could lock them in a trailer with a bed, a pint of lube, and a dozen condoms and not let them out until the supplies were exhausted, the bed was broken, and their dicks had fallen off.

Cheered by the image, he found someone to roust out his overpaid stars. Not Natasha, but Holly, a familiar face from a few of his movies. Holly was the least starstruck person Ben had met and the most quietly efficient. He told her what he wanted and she smiled, tucked a lock of red hair behind her multi-pierced ear, and nodded, disappearing without saying a word.

Ben glanced at his watch. Holly would have those two on set in five minutes or less. Time for a coffee.

"You!" he bawled out. "Coffee!"

The PA with the jelly bean fetish—God help her if it were Lee she had her sights set on—leaped up from the chair she had no business sitting in because there was always something better she should be doing. She looked around wildly before getting the message he meant her and scurrying off.

Ben breathed in the familiar smell of a soundstage, all sawdust and heated, crackling air, and smiled, big, wide, and toothy. God, he loved this. All of it. He'd been sitting behind a desk for far too long. He'd missed the front-line action.

"Mr. Alder? I got a call, and you know the horse you ordered for the scene in the woods? Will a brown one do? They're all out of palominos."

Ben spun around and gaped at a hapless underling clutching a clipboard, like Natalie—no, Natasha. "What? No! Fix it!"

"But—"

"Son, the writers put a palomino in that scene," Ben said with his friendliest, scariest smile. "If you want to be the one to tell them you couldn't get them what they wanted, if you want to be the one to destroy their artistic vision, trample it to the ground, then go right ahead. They're in that little room beside the men's john."

"The broom cupboard?"

"Is that what they're calling the writers' room these days?" Ben inquired innocently. "Like the green room or something?"

"No, I think it's actually—"

"Go away," Ben said softly, with emphasis, tiring of the game. Holly was shepherding Morden and Simons past the doughnuts and coffee, and that meant the curtain was about to rise.

Showtime.

_3 INT. YORK'S PENTHOUSE - EVENING_

_DOLAN Going to let me in?_

_YORK I— Yeah, sure. Come in. Please._

_DOLAN You weren't expecting to see me again._

_YORK (quietly) I always hoped I would._

_DOLAN (shrugs) Should've wished for me. Or don't you do that anymore?_

_YORK (hand covers his forearm instinctively for a moment) Yeah, I do. But it doesn't work like that. You know it doesn't._

_DOLAN. Whatever._

_Dolan reaches out, grabs York's arm, and stares down._

_[FX shot of hourglass spinning]_

_DOLAN (under his breath) I can still see it. God, I can still— Why is it so…faded?_

_Dolan looks at York, his face twisted with emotion, and then steps back to give himself room to punch York hard in the mouth._

_DOLAN How much time have you got left, damn it?_

_[Extract from the script for the movie_ Hourglass _(2010).]_

Chapter Twelve

"I don't know why you came back, Dolan, and I don't care," Ash said in Steve York's lazy drawl, his swollen lip courtesy of makeup this time. Ben had made the writers insert the punch as a way of shoring up Lee's lie at the press conference—or possibly because he thought it worked in the scene. Lee hadn't asked for details. "I want you to leave again."

Lee responded with Rob's line automatically, but the dialogue in the scene was too close for comfort to what was going on between Ash and himself to make it easy to stay in character. His emotions bled through, staining his words, and he knew Ben would notice and make them reshoot—again. This was the fifth day of shooting, and Lee was exhausted. He'd forgotten what hours under the studio lights were like, and how numbingly boring repeating a line twenty or thirty times with different words emphasized could be. The joy of returning to acting had fizzled to a flat apathy, and his head was killing him.

It didn't help that Ash was pretty much ignoring him and flirting with every female on set, from the teenage PAs to the silver-haired woman in Costume who looked old enough to remember when movies were made in black and white.

The only PA who wasn't lapping up Ash's charm was Natasha someone-or-other, who dogged Lee's footsteps, wide-eyed and worshipful. She projected innocence and naivety, but when Lee found himself alone with her in his trailer she'd all but swarmed over him, hot lips seeking his as her hands explored. Pushing her away had been like unpeeling Velcro.

He'd tried to get rid of her by telling her the simple truth that she was too young for him, embroidering it with a half-truth when that didn't work, and confiding that he was dealing with a bad breakup. Natasha had calmly suggested a cure for the breakup blues that involved a blow job right now with whatever Lee wanted to do later in the hotel room of his choosing, but she'd accepted his refusal eventually, if reluctantly. Lee wasn't sure why he hadn't told her he was gay. Maybe Ash's stubborn fear of coming out had rubbed off on him. What had been relatively easy to admit to in the outside world seemed impossible to voice in the fishbowl artificiality of Hollywood.

Equally impossible to admit, except to himself, was how much he wanted Ash to be the one pressed up against him, all hard urgency, Ash's lust-thickened voice whispering filthy suggestions in Lee's ear.

Lee fumbled his next line. Ash sighed impatiently and cast his eyes to the heavens in a long-suffering way. Ben's screamed "Cut!" was a relief. Samantha was on set, which stopped Ben from being as foul-mouthed and bad-tempered as usual, but not by much.

Lee liked Sam, who'd managed to extend her promised one day on set to three by being very, very sad at the end of the first day and telling Ben that the summer camp she was supposed to go to was a hell on earth. She was refreshingly non-bratty most of the time and had asked some intelligent questions about the original show, questions that Lee had been unable to answer for the most part. Sam knew every detail about _Hourglass_ from obscure character names to episode titles and shooting locations, and Lee hadn't given the show a thought for too many years to fill in any gaps.

"We used to shoot three episodes at the same time, honey," he'd said when she'd tried to discuss a characterization point. "You'd get a script for a scene, learn it in a five-minute break, do it, then shoot something for a different episode after lunch. And we never had the time to sit down and watch the episodes when the effects and music had been added."

"But Daddy sent you the show on DVD!"

"Uh, yeah," Lee had admitted with a self-conscious cough. "I didn't, ah, well, I never got around to—"

"You didn't _watch_ them?" Samantha's lips had quivered with disappointment, and Lee, helpless, had offered her a green jelly bean by way of apology.

Now, sitting beside her father on her own diminutive chair, Samantha was frowning. It could be from boredom, but Lee doubted it. She was her father's daughter, no doubt about it, and the tedium of moviemaking was something she was used to. Maybe Ben didn't let her come to many shoots, but she'd told Lee a few anecdotes about famous stars on set that had sounded firsthand. She was under no illusions about the nitty-gritty of the business.

No, she was probably upset because Rob and Steve weren't clicking the way they had on the show. They’d clicked like crazy in the day before their actors got naked and sweaty, and more than fine once the sex had started, but evidently a breakup and a decade of bitterness were killing the chemistry right now.

While someone from hair and makeup fussed around Ash with a comb, Lee idly contemplated asking Ben privately for a fifteen-minute break so that he could knock the supercilious look off Ash's face with a quick blow job and release some of his tension at the same time.

The crazy thing was that Ben would probably have agreed. Ash wouldn't, though. Ash might have turned up at Stan's place looking for a renewal of what they'd had, but Lee hadn't felt any real sense that he'd been missed. Ash hadn't spoken to him since Lee's rejection beyond what was necessary. Ash didn't love him, never had, it seemed, even when he'd been murmuring the words into Lee's ear with what had seemed like sincerity. Heat between them, sure, but nothing that lasted. Well, fine. He'd spent ten years comparing every man he'd met to Ash for nothing because the most forgettable of them had at least been honest with him and never pretended they wanted more than some fun, but what the hell. Chalk it up to experience.

Lee rubbed his hand across his forehead, the ache behind his eyes intensifying to the point where he wanted to find a cool, dark corner and crawl into it to die. There was a worrying prism effect going on in front of his left eye. He hadn't been sleeping, and every time he jerked off, all he could think about was Ash. The strain of acting opposite the man was getting to him.

Day five. He wouldn’t make it.

A small hand slipped into his, and before Lee could gather his thoughts, Sam led him off the set and down a short corridor to an exterior door. Lee would have protested, but a glance at Ben showed him looking thoughtful, not mad, and if he'd stayed he might have done something memorable like throwing up.

Once outside, Lee blinked painfully in the dazzle of bright sunlight, unresisting as Sam towed him across an open space to a luxury trailer, much bigger than his own.

"Isn't this—"

"It's Daddy's," Sam said. "It's okay, he said we could use it. No one will bother you in here."

_Use it for what?_ Lee wanted to ask, but he followed Alice down the rabbit hole instead.

The trailer was dim and cool, and there was a wide couch running across a wall. Lee sank onto it and groaned softly, his headache a mortal enemy.

"You have a migraine. Mommy gets them sometimes."

"Only a headache, sweetie," Lee told her, closing his eyes and enjoying the way the cool air from a fan felt blowing over his face. "This is helping, though, thanks."

"No, it's a migraine, and you're dehydrated too, I bet," Sam announced. "Take two of these with some water."

Lee opened his eyes and squinted at a bottle of water and an industrial-size bottle of Tylenol. "Uh, okay."

"Drink it all," she said, showing some of her father's ability to give orders that couldn't be disobeyed. "Now, you're going to take a nap."

"I am?"

Sam nodded. "Uh-huh." Any resemblance to Florence Nightingale vanished when she added, "You're wasting everyone's time out there, and time is money. I told Daddy you looked tired and needed to rest, and he's going to shoot some other scene for a few hours. _And_ you're going to finish early tonight."

"Six o'clock?" Lee asked hopefully.

"Maybe," she said. "If you don't screw up the rest of your scenes for today."

Lee drank some more water, feeling it leak into his dry and dusty brain cells. "You're like your old man, you know that?"

"Everyone says that," she told him, sounding unimpressed. "You and Mr. Morden—Ash. You're not like I thought you would be."

Lee finished off the bottle of water and turned his face in to one of the cushions on the couch. Soft. Nice. He kicked off his shoes and curled up. "No?" he mumbled, watching the flashing lights in front of his eyes with a weird fascination.

A throw, light but warm, landed on him, and he clutched at it gratefully. He hated sleeping without a cover over him, even if it was only the lightest of sheets.

"You used to like each other," Sam said, a world of regret in her voice. "Didn't you?"

"Mm," Lee said. "Used to be friends." Was that true? Yeah, in season one, at least.

"The movie's not going to work unless you make up," Sam said severely. "Rob and Steve love each other, and you can't get that over to the audience if you and Ash aren't speaking."

"Sure we can," Lee murmured. "We're actors. Pretending is what we do." What she'd said sank into his sleep-logged mind and he shook his head. "Not love. They were friends too, thass all. Jus' friends."

"They loved each other," Sam said with conviction. "It's why Alura let Steve bring Rob back to life after he fell off the roof, though it was against the rules. True love conquers all."

"Bullshit," Lee whispered, but he was falling asleep. If the plaintive thread of Sam's voice followed him into his dreams, he didn't remember it when he woke, alone, around six.

His mouth was a sandpit, but there was another bottle of water close at hand, and the Tylenol bottle. Lee checked the time and decided that he could have another two, though his headache had all but disappeared along with the flashing lights.

Next to the water bottle was a piece of paper ripped off a pad and decorated with a Hello Kitty logo. Lee swallowed the Tylenol with a long gulp of water and picked up the note, expecting it to be from Sam. Funny kid, but nice with it.

It was from Ash. Lee's fingers tightened involuntarily on the piece of paper, creasing it. For all that he'd been face to face with Ash the past few days, there was something about seeing his writing again that hit hard. Ash wrote in an incredibly small, neat hand, totally unlike the slashing scribble Lee would have expected from such an outgoing personality. They hadn't exchanged notes often, and when they had, they'd been discreet to the point of being incomprehensible even to each other, but Lee knew Ash's handwriting too well to doubt this note was authentic.

He blinked until it came into focus.

_Shooting's over for us for the day. Ben says you'd better be fit tomorrow or he'll do things to your ass that I never got around to._

_We need to talk. For real this time, no bullshit and lies. Meet me at the beach at eight. You know where._

It wasn't signed. It didn't need to be. Lee folded it in half with a care the task didn't merit and then reconsidered the impulse to slip it into his pocket. He was still in costume, dressed in Rob's jeans and shirt. It wasn't too different from his street clothes, but if he went off the lot wearing it, Costume would rip him a new one. Caution overrode sentiment. He needed to take a leak anyway, and so Ash's note was flushed away in a quietly efficient swirl of water.

***

The beach where he and Ash used to meet and walk was about thirty minutes from the studio at this time of night, and Lee made the drive on automatic pilot. Ten years ago, it'd been quiet there, the sands never quite deserted, but not covered with people sunbathing either. When he pulled up in the parking lot close by, he saw that things hadn't changed too much. The tourists still headed for Venice, marveling at the familiarity of a place immortalized in a hundred movies and TV shows.

Their beach was a tucked-away cove, unpredictable currents making it unsuitable for swimming or surfing, a tumble of rocks eating into the sandy area unless it was low tide. They'd liked it that way. They'd sat in the low dunes, stared out at the ocean, and relaxed, the salty air blowing over them, the beat of the waves on the shore both calming and invigorating.

Lee was a few minutes late, no more than that, but Ash had never been all that punctual, so he was surprised to see him sitting on a bench at the edge of the parking lot, neither his vintage silver Porsche nor his around-town red Mustang in sight.

"Tell me you didn't walk," he said when he was a few feet away from Ash. "I think they arrest you for that in this town."

Ash smiled and pointed at a sedate, nondescript car in the corner of the lot that looked as if it belonged to a little old lady. "That's mine. It's what I drive when I want to be ignored."

Lee felt a flash of disappointment. The note hadn't been signed, but it had been less guarded than Ash's notes usually were, and he'd hoped… "Still hiding?"

Ash sighed. "Lee, you've never had the press snapping you coming out of a store, then finding out from the cashier what you bought in there and God help you if it's something they can twist into something juicy. Sure, sometimes the publicity's good and we court it, but sometimes…you want some space to live."

"Meaning you're a star and I'm not?"

"I don't twinkle that brightly, but more than you, yes." Ash met his gaze levelly. "That was your choice. If you'd stuck around, who knows where you'd have ended up. You were good."

Lee shrugged, uncomfortable with praise after the way he'd been screwing up scene after scene the past few days. "Once, maybe. Not now."

"Let's go and sit in the dunes where we used to," Ash said, getting to his feet.

Lee blocked his way. "Why? Why drag us both down Memory Lane when we can say what we need to right here?"

Ash pointed at the dunes. "I'm going to watch the sun go down where we always used to because it's the best view in town. If you want to watch it from the parking lot, go ahead."

Unable to find a reply to that, Lee followed Ash to the dunes, the soft sand shifting beneath his feet and finding a way into the battered canvas sneakers he was wearing. When they reached a good place to sit in, a hollow open to the sea, sand at their backs, he took his sneakers off and enjoyed the simple pleasure of digging his toes in deep.

"You always used to do that," Ash commented, kicking off his casually expensive sandals. "And then you'd bitch about the sand rubbing your feet when you put your shoes back on."

"Ash…" Lee turned away from the blue of the ocean, ever shifting shades reflecting the sky above, to stare into Ash's equally blue eyes. "We can't go back."

"No," Ash agreed. "We can't. It's been too long. I'm not sure what we had back then was worth going back _to_ , are you?"

Lee considered it. Snatched meetings, furtive kisses, a constant high of arousal tempered by worry that they'd get caught…and never being sure that Ash cared about him. "I guess not."

"I let you down," Ash continued. "At least, you think I did and I guess… Well, I put my career over you, and if ninety percent of the people I know wouldn't see that as a mistake, I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't the biggest mistake of my life."

"Don't get all hearts and flowers on me," Lee said as lightly as he could. "We'd probably have broken up, anyway. I don't think either of us was ready to commit. You took the first step away, and maybe that's what I can't forgive you for."

"Try," Ash said. "Try hard, Lee, because I can't afford to walk away from this movie—did you see that penalty clause in the contract?—but it's not working right now and people are wondering why."

"And we can't have that, can we?" Lee said bitterly. "God, I'm so stupid. I thought you wanted to meet to—" He hesitated and Ash reached out his hand, clasping Lee's warmly.

"You're not stupid. I can see how much being around me is costing you. To be honest, you look like hell."

"Migraine," Lee said defensively, shaking off Ash's hand before he gave in to the need to do some touching of his own. "That's all."

"You used to get those when you were stressed," Ash said, the fingers of the hand that had been touched Lee curling in on themselves as if Ash were trying to hold on to something. "You're proving my point."

"So I'll get an early night and I'll be fine by tomorrow."

"I won't be," Ash said quietly. "I'm not walking around looking like I'm about to pass out or throw up, but I'm suffering too, more than I thought."

"So what do you want?" Lee snarled, desperate for a way to cut through the hints and half-truths they were hiding behind. "For once, tell me what it is you want, like you should've done before. I need to know."

"We can't go back," Ash said. "I'm not sure if we can go forward, because when this movie ends, you're going to be the one disappearing, right? Back to that house of yours."

Lee nodded. "It's home. It's where I want to be."

"So why don't we settle for _now_?" Ash said. "I want you and I'd have to be blind not to see you feel the same way. I don't know if I love you the way you want me to, but I know I've never felt more for anyone than I did for you. It isn't about getting hard every time you touch me, every time I see you smiling, even if it's not at me—it's more than that."

Lee laughed, a short, hollow laugh. "God, you too? I swear these headaches are mostly due to a lack of blood anywhere north of my waist."

Ash smiled and brushed the back of his hand across Lee's face, over his jaw, his mouth, his hair. Lee allowed himself to enjoy the touch, desperate for it.

"Ash…"

"You could never say no to me," Ash said, moving closer until his knee touched Lee's. "Believe me, I tried not to take advantage of that, but now I don't want to. I don't care how I get you back, I don't care if it is only for a month or so, I can't live with you this close and not be with you. Tell me what I have to do to make you see I mean it."

"I know you mean it," Lee said. "I'm not sure I could handle starting things up with you again and then walking away—and I will. I've enjoyed being back more than I thought I would, and I'm going to come back now and then to see Stan—I've missed him—but we both know if I knocked on your door six months from now, your bed wouldn't be empty." He shrugged. "Why should it? I'm not as romantic as I used to be, Ash, but I'm not about to put myself in a place where I get my heart broken again. I was over you, more or less, and now—now I'm back where I was. Wanting you. Needing you. But this time, I'm not a fool and I know it's going nowhere." He gave Ash a wry smile. "Funny, though; knowing that doesn't make me want to say, whoo-hoo, let's get naked and fuck, the way it does you."

Ash turned to face the ocean, the setting sun softening the light, his profile perfectly positioned to catch the right angle. He looked like a movie star should, Lee thought with a flash of humor. Impossibly good-looking, clean-cut and dashing. A hero, a lover, a leader of men.

Lee knew better. He'd been close to Ash from the start, and before they'd become lovers, they'd lived in each other's pockets near enough, Ben's lack of budget forcing them to share a trailer. Ben had said it was only temporary, but egos aside, neither of them had minded.

He'd seen Ash with food poisoning from eating leftover Chinese, sitting on a toilet with a bucket in his hands, his face pale and sweating as his body voided everything he'd put into it in the last day or two. Lee had taken care of him with a lack of squeamishness that had cut through Ash's embarrassment at being too weak to wipe up after himself and dealt with Ben's constant reminders about shooting schedules with all the tact he could muster. Which hadn't been much, given the way Ash looked.

He'd also seen Ash drunk, crying, sloppily sentimental and with a pimple on his ass. He'd _known_ Ash, inside and out, with one huge blind spot when it came to Ash's ambition. He'd always underestimated how much being a star meant to Ash.

"Why did it matter so much to you that you made it big, household name and all that?" Lee asked on impulse.

"Who doesn't want to be famous?" Ash replied, still giving the ocean his attention, a stiffness about him suggesting that he was hurt and withdrawing into himself to deal with it.

"Sure, I guess," Lee said, "but you never struck me as the ruthless type until that night when you told me not to bother packing for Vancouver."

"I didn't— Ruthless?" Ash turned his head to stare at Lee, shock in his eyes. "Lee, you've got to believe me when I say I didn't mean it to come over that way. I didn't see you. All I saw was the movie and the chance at an Oscar."

"Which you got."

"For all the good it did, yeah." Ash picked up a handful of sand and let it pour through his fingers, the action triggering a memory for Lee. Had Ash done that in a scene once? Maybe. "It's old news now. I think that was my fifteen minutes. You only get one shot, and I had it. Now, I'm useful for a certain type of role, and with every year I get less useful. Watch your TV and pretty soon you'll see me in a commercial for a used-car lot or something."

Lee couldn't help laughing. "God, you're a melodramatic son of a bitch at times, you know that? Come here."

Without thought, because reassuring Ash when he got like this was automatic, he put his arm around Ash and tugged him in close for a kiss. It was nothing more than a swift, hard press of his lips against Ash's, but the ones that followed after he found himself unable to pull back demanded a soaring soundtrack. The kisses at Stan's apartment had been good, as furious as he had been, but these were better. There might still be barriers between them, doubts and grudges on both sides, but they were disappearing as inevitably as the sun to the west of them.

Lee nuzzled into Ash's throat and kissed the beating pulse there, tasting the salt air on Ash's skin. "I guess you were right," he said.

"Come back to my place," Ash said, his voice raw and husky, his hands tight on Lee's arms. "Please."

"Your place? Are you sure about that?"

"There's no one there," Ash said. "I've got a housekeeper, but she leaves at six and we'll be gone in the morning before she arrives. Ben wants us in makeup at five to shoot the scene when we're old men."

That scene would be hell. Emoting under a few pounds of makeup and a wig was never easy, but Lee was more concerned with the rest of Ash's words. "So I get invited because there's no one to see me? Gee, thanks. I love being someone's guilty secret."

"Don't," Ash said with surprising vehemence. "You're _not_. Conchita knows I'm gay, but she doesn't see it as anyone's business but mine. She'd never sell me out to a reporter. She's a friend, okay? She's been with me for years. Come to dinner tomorrow night and you can meet her. Tonight, though—" Ash swallowed visibly, his throat working. "God, Lee, I don't want anyone there! I want you."

Lee smiled back a little shakily. "I guess an audience would make it hard for you to blow me in the hallway."

The intensity in Ash's eyes deepened. "If that's what you want, I'll do it. I want to make things up to you, baby. "

Lee got to his feet and gave Ash his hand, hauling him up. "You said that to the guest star in the episode with the circus performers," he told Ash. "Right before her monkey started throwing peanuts at you."

He had the satisfaction of seeing Ash's jaw drop for a moment, but then Ash grinned, the natural, mischievous grin than had never failed to make Lee love him a little bit more. "Hey, the writer from that episode went on to write a best seller, and that's what you deserve. The best."

Lee shook his head in pretended defeat and bent to pick up his shoes, his body already tight with anticipation. God, this would be so good. Insane and a bad idea, yes, but so fucking good.

  1. _INT York's penthouse._



_DOLAN [tense, on edge] Fancy place. Nice view._

_YORK Thanks. Look, sit down. Let me get you a drink._

_DOLAN I'm good, thanks. Well, maybe a can of soda if you bring it out unopened. And if it's diet._

_YORK [puzzled, then gets it, rolls his eyes] Do I look like someone who drugs kids so I can sleep with them? Seriously? And you're cute, but I go for women. I brought you back here because you can see this tattoo on my arm and that's it._

_DOLAN [incredulous] I'm here because I've got_ eyes _?_

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Thirteen

Ash pulled into his driveway, the lights of Lee's truck behind him as they had been for the whole trip up to his house. He was gripping the wheel hard enough that his fingers ached, but he couldn't seem to ease off. Lee was coming to his home. Lee would stay the night, sleep beside him—how often had they ever managed _that_ in the old days?—and then they'd drive to the set, arriving a discreet ten minutes apart. He felt like murmuring _wish granted_ because that was what this was. Hard not to wonder what the price would be. Maybe Lee was right and they shouldn't be doing this. Snatching at happiness was one thing, but he remembered the sense of loss when had Lee left, and if Lee said goodbye with a smile this time, it wouldn’t make it any easier.

He wanted to think that they could still see each other after the movie wrapped, but Lee lived too far away. Not in terms of actual distance—Lee's house was only a two-hour drive away, and that was nothing—but the miles separating them put Lee in another world. Lee might have crossed between them easily enough, but Ash wasn't sure he could. It wasn't the money or the fame. It was all about priorities. His centered around his next role, his slow descent from the B-list to the wilderness, and the number of candles on his birthday cake. He'd invested with an eye to the future, and he'd never be short of money by the standards of the people in Lee's town, but if the movie money stopped rolling in, he'd be invisible to most of his friends soon after, his name vanishing from the “must invite” lists. Lee lived where people celebrated birthdays instead of pretending that they were happening to someone else.

He pulled up, leaving room for Lee to park beside him, and got out of his car. To hell with it. Lee was already walking over to him, his gaze locked on Ash, not the impressive entrance to Ash's house, all sweeping lines and curves, designed by an architect with a vision and five million dollars of his client's money to play with. This wasn't the time for second thoughts or regrets. Ash’s breath quickened. Lee. Not some forgettable pick-up in a bar who Ash would have to act for, always putting on a show. This was Lee, and Ash could be himself, because Lee didn't want a performance; he wanted Ash.

Not letting himself wonder if ten years had changed that as well as so many other things, Ash waved at the house. "Want a tour?"

"Only of your bedroom.” It might have sounded cheesy or flirtatious coming from someone else, but from Lee it sounded like the simple truth.

Ash cleared his throat. "What happened to your plans for the hallway?"

"Nothing," Lee said, a foot away from Ash, smiling lazily at him. "I assumed the tour would take place after my blow job, but I'm out of touch with the social niceties these days. How does it usually go?"

"You're making me want to do you right here," Ash said softly, and saw Lee's calm shatter like glass.

Lee passed his tongue over his lips, a habit of his, then reached for the buckle on his belt. "Okay."

"You—" Ash grabbed Lee's hand before it could unfasten or unzip anything and headed for the house. "Inside. Now. _God._ "

He got the front door closed and locked behind them; then he turned and slammed Lee up against the smooth, dark wood.

"You know all my fucking buttons, don't you?" he said between kisses, pinning Lee's wrists against the door. "You know me better than anyone ever has, and that's never going to change."

Lee stood without struggling, but that didn't mean he was relaxed. He moved, straining, not to get away but to get closer to Ash, his eyes wild and his breath coming in short, quick pants.

"Let me show you how much I remember about what _you_ like," Ash said and bit down on the curve where Lee's neck met his shoulder, resenting the fact he still had to hold back and not leave a mark, but too lost in the sounds Lee made to care much.

He slid to his knees, his hands still locked around Lee's wrists, and mouthed the rigid length of Lee's cock, hidden behind a layer of denim and whatever Lee was wearing under his jeans. Lee muttered an incoherent stream of words that added up to a plea for Ash to get on with it, but Ash wasn't in a rush. His cock might have been as hard as Lee's and his climax as close, but he planned to make this last until they were both begging.

With Lee's clothing as protection for his dick, Ash could be rougher than usual, and he took full advantage of that, using his teeth to dig in and Lee's moans to guide him. It wasn't until the denim over Lee's erection was soaked and clinging to what lay beneath that Ash finally released Lee's wrists.

He knelt back on his heels, fully in command of the situation though he was down on the floor, and said, "Show me what you've got for me, babe."

Lee went immediately to his buckle and zipper, fumbling his jeans open. Ash smiled when he saw Lee was bare underneath them. Maybe Lee hadn't needed seducing tonight after all. He reached up, took hold of Lee's jeans, and yanked them down to midthigh. Lee looked raunchy as hell like that, the tails of his shirt doing nothing to hide the impudent thrust of his cock.

Ash hummed appreciatively. "Unbutton your shirt."

"God, you're bossy," Lee said, but his voice was uneven and his hands shook as he obeyed, enough to make Ash want to push harder, not back off.

Ash took the tails of Lee's shirt in his hands and twisted them into tight bunches. "Open your hands."

Lee gave a puzzled grunt but obeyed, holding his hands palm up. Ash filled them with the balled-up fabric, then positioned Lee's hands against the door, wide and waist-high, his shirt like butterfly wings, exposing him.

"Oh fuck," Lee said, glancing down at himself, vulnerable, displayed. "I'm not gonna last much longer, Ash."

The hardwood floor was killing Ash's knees, but he'd have knelt on hot coals if it got him a view like this. Lee was in better shape now than he had been when they'd first met, his body filled out, matured, hard work giving his muscles a practical edge Ash found deeply arousing. Lee's nipples were hard, surrounded by dark hair that lay in feathered swirls across his chest, a thin line leading down his belly to join the cloud around his stiffly erect cock and tight, rounded balls.

"If you come before I've got you in my mouth, I'll make you sleep in the spare room," Ash told him, the threat completely empty. He wanted to taste Lee, swallow down every drop, but the thought of watching Lee climax from this, helplessly aroused and losing it, was enough to make Ash close to coming in his pants.

"So do it," Lee said between gritted teeth, his hips arching up. "Suck me. I'm not on my knees, but I'll beg if you want."

"Don't need to," Ash said, and after a single kiss in the hollow of Lee's hip, to see if the skin there was still as baby soft and smooth as it used to be, he licked Lee's cock from root to tip.

"Jesus! Oh, God, yes. More."

Lee's hands hadn't moved from where Ash had placed them, but he writhed now as he tried to nudge his cock past Ash's lips and into his mouth. Ash loved Lee like this, wanton, past caring how he looked or sounded. It took a lot to get Ash to that point, but Lee had always been able to reach it easily. He rewarded Lee's surrender with a swirling lick around the head of Lee's cock, his fingers curling around the shaft to hold it in place when he took his mouth away again. Teasing Lee was torture for Ash, who wanted to feel his mouth filled by Lee's cock more than Lee wanted to put it there, but he was like a kid peeling tape off a gift slowly instead of ripping the paper off, making the moment last. Ash ran the fingers of his free hand lightly over Lee's stomach and hips, then down to his thighs and balls, keeping the caresses unpredictable and fleeting. Lee whimpered Ash's name now, his knuckles white, the skin stretched tightly over them.

"You're being so good," Ash murmured, transferring his attentions to Lee's hands and letting go of his cock. He traced each bump of knuckle and then kissed the beating pulse under the fragile skin of Lee's inner wrist before kneeling back to look his fill again.

"Ash, if you don't—" Lee broke off whatever threat he'd been about to make and took a deep breath. "Tell me what you want me to do. Anything. I can stay like this, I can jerk off in your face, I can do this to you. But don't stop touching me."

Ash hardened to the point where he wasn't sure he could lean forward again without coming. They'd played games like this before, swapping roles as the mood took them, but he'd never bothered with anyone else. He'd usually controlled most of his encounters with his one-night stands, but never to this extent, more a matter of him deciding how he wanted the sex to progress. The trust pouring off Lee was intoxicating. Letting Lee take away his control later would feel as exciting. That was an indulgence Ash hadn't allowed himself for a long time.

He steadied himself with some long breaths and a deliberate effort of will. He could've gotten his dick out and jerked off as he sucked Lee, but he preferred to wait and let Lee be more involved. Lee was close to the point where waiting wasn't an option. His dick was darkly red, the slit in the head beaded with clear liquid, veins on the shaft standing out like ivy twining around a marble column.

Without warning, Ash slapped his hands against Lee's thighs, high up, and slammed Lee back against the door as he took Lee's cock as deep as he could. Lee didn't cry out or start to fuck Ash's mouth as Ash had half expected. Instead, Lee exhaled, a drawn-out sigh of pure relief, and the tension left his body with the breath. He was pliant—not passive but fully involved, and Ash was able to do exactly what he wanted with the thick cock rounding his lips and nudging the back of his throat. He gave in to his hunger, close to choking himself, craving the sense of being filled and owned that sucking cock always gave him. The balance of power needed to shift now. Ash wanted Lee driving into his mouth, long powerful strokes, arrogant, demanding, and he told Lee that with his hands, tugging Lee forward. With room for his hands to slide around and cup Lee's ass, Ash could urge Lee to move at the exact speed he wanted, and it didn't take long for Lee to get the message. His hands were still against the door, holding his shirt open, and every time Ash glimpsed them out of the corners of his eyes, he felt a frisson of lust go through him. If Lee would do that, what else would he do? If he wanted payback, what would he make _Ash_ do?

Like Lee, he was willing to do anything.

He moaned around Lee's cock, his lips tingling, his jaw already aching pleasantly. He flicked his tongue in wildly lavish patterns over the hard flesh fucking his mouth and heard Lee's breath get choppy, labored. Lee came with a strangled cry, his hands finally leaving their place and gripping Ash's head. He pumped his hips as he came, flooding Ash's mouth with cum, thick and warm. Ash swallowed slowly, needing to breathe but wanting to keep the taste fresh and immediate as long as he could. His climax didn't matter as much as making Lee happy. Lee was owed this moment, and Ash felt he'd delivered. He let Lee's slippery, still-hard cock slip free and steadied Lee as he sank to the floor with a heartfelt moan.

Ash was ready for Lee to react the way most men would after a submission that complete, with a retreat into flippancy or hostility, but Lee slung his arm around Ash's shoulders and pulled them together in an awkward but intimate hug. Lee kissed the side of his head and gave him a clumsy pat on his back, coordination shot. He sympathized. He wasn't sure he could stand and walk, either.

"You always could blow my mind as well as my dick," Lee said eventually, the silence between them surprisingly comfortable, though Ash's legs were anything but. "Jesus, Ash, warn me next time, okay?"

Ash chuckled, warmth suffusing him at Lee's casual assumption they'd do this again. "Spur of the moment. I guess you inspire me."

"Good to know." Lee stirred, stretching out his legs. "Ready to try standing? Or maybe we can crawl. How far away is your bedroom, anyway?"

"Too far to crawl," Ash said, "and I need a drink first, so let's aim for the nearest room with a bar."

Lee rested his hand on Ash's groin, his fingers spread widely. "You sure about that? Feels like there's something here that needs seeing to first."

"I was waiting for you to be less, uh, busy," Ash said, punctuating his words with a kiss and covering Lee's hand with his own. Grinding up against the double pressure of their hands made him gasp, arousal flaring up again.

"I'm not busy now," Lee said, "but unless you have a thing for sex in hallways, let’s take this somewhere with a bed."

"You've convinced me." Ash got to his feet, his muscles responding with more efficiency than he'd expected, his fitness routine paying off, and helped Lee rise. Lee tugged his jeans up with a complete lack of self-consciousness, his shirt hanging open. "I do need that drink, though. Every time I tried to get a bottle of water, Ben called me back for another take before I had the chance to take more than a few gulps. Those lights were brutal. I was fantasizing about a cold beer for most of the afternoon."

"It's your call," Lee said amicably enough. "I guess I could keep you company and have one too."

Ash led the way through to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went, and not missing the way Lee looked around with a frank appraisal. ''So what do you think of the place?"

"Nice," Lee said with a nod, accepting a bottle of beer with the cap twisted off. "Clean lines, very classic, very you." He pointed at a plate hanging on the wall by the massive oven that Ash never used, the colors still bright, the design stylized flowers against a riot of greenery. The plate didn't match the kitchen, but Ash didn't care. He'd refused to let the decorator use the plate as inspiration for the color choices either. Ash didn't need the plate to fit in; he needed it to be exactly there, where his grandmother had hung it in her kitchen. "You had that in your old place. It was your grandmother's, right?"

Ash was absurdly touched. "Yeah. There's still stuff in here you'll recognize. You know me, the original pack rat. I don't throw something away if I like it."

Too late, he realized how easy it would be for Lee to pounce on that and use it as a weapon, but Lee smiled and raised his bottle in a toast. "Here's to keeping stuff. Most of mine's in boxes back at my house. There's no point unpacking it to get it covered with dust or paint, so I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor and eating off a foldaway table and chair."

"It sounds like a huge job," Ash said. "When you get paid, are you going to step back and let the professionals do it?"

"Some of it," Lee admitted. "I'm into the renovation, but there're a couple of jobs too much for me and some I'm not qualified to tackle. Mostly, though, I want to do it myself. I don't mind how long it takes. It's fun."

"It doesn't sound like it," Ash said, "but whatever floats your boat." He clinked his bottle against Lee's. "Here's to restoration of the old into something new and better."

That had about as much meaning attached as his earlier words had carried, but again, Lee smiled. Maybe the blow job had mellowed him, or maybe it was time for both of them to relax into this truce and look forward to something like a lasting peace. Maybe.

They ended up outside by the pool, finishing their beers and drinking two more. The pool had underwater lights, and they changed the dark water into a shifting, shoaling mass of blues.

Ash dragged two loungers side by side, unwilling to put Lee out of reach, and they were necking as much as talking, trading kisses for sips of beer. Ash was tired enough that a couple of bottles of beer was giving him a buzz, and Lee seemed to be in much the same state.

"When you punched me, what was that you said about the premiere?" Ash asked. He'd been playing with Lee's nipples, biting them hard and licking them wet, but he let his fingers replace his teeth so that he could ask his question, pinching Lee's nipple hard enough judging by Lee's throat-caught moan.

"Don't stop doing that," Lee said. "Feels good. Feels great. Jesus, you bring out the kink in me. Stop me if I say I'm gonna buy nipple clamps, okay?"

Ash twisted his fingers obediently, then realized that letting go was a better strategy if he wanted an answer. "The premiere?"

Lee gave him a look that combined exasperation with resignation. "You left me a ticket for it with my agent."

"Yeah. I couldn't find you, and that was my last hope. I figured she knew where you were, if anyone did. She wouldn’t tell me, but what agent passes up on the chance to get her client seen at a premiere?"

"Not Claudia," Lee agreed. "She didn't know where I was, but I'd left a mailbox address and she sent it there. I got it and I was—I lost it. Sorry. I didn't know you were trying to reach out to me. I thought it was a slap in the face. Look how high up I managed to climb without you dragging me back deal. And you'd sent the invitation for me and a date. How the hell was I supposed to take that?"

Ash groaned. "God, I swear I didn't mean it like that, any of it."

"I watched it on TV. Only a fifteen-second clip at the end of the news, but I saw you, some model on your arm, posing for the crowd." Lee sounded desolate, as if the memory had the power to hurt him. "I went out, got drunk, and ended up in a room with two guys who liked to play rough. I couldn't sit down for a week."

"Shit, Lee, I'm so fucking sorry." It wasn't his fault, not entirely, but Ash still felt buried under a mountain of guilt. He pictured Lee on stained sheets in a crummy motel, sandwiched between two men with cold eyes and hands that knew how to hurt, begging them to stop, and if the image was probably a long way from the truth, it still left him shaken.

"They didn't do anything I didn't want them to," Lee said as if he could read Ash's thoughts. "It was extreme, but they didn't push me past my limits. Or not far. I needed to hurt on the outside as much as I was torn up on the inside. I wasn't in a good place back then."

"I want to make it up to you," Ash said, the intensity of his desire to comfort surprising him. He'd never enjoyed hurting anyone, not emotionally and certainly not physically, but he'd had his ruthless moments when it came to getting roles and advancing his career. The mild guilt he'd felt on occasion had never approached this overwhelming wish to go back and do things differently. "God, Lee, I wish—"

"No point in wishing," Lee said and tapped Ash's forearm. " _You_ don't have a handy-dandy hourglass." He hooked his hand around the back of Ash's neck and pulled him in for a kiss, gentle enough to make Ash's defenses break open a little wider. "Hearing you say that…It means something."

"It's words. Stupid, fucking words." It might have been the beer or his reawakening arousal talking, but it didn't feel that way. "All that time wasted because I made the wrong choice."

"I'm not sure you did." Lee struggled up to a sitting position, his shirt billowing out as the breeze coming from the ocean strengthened, making the umbrellas around the pool creak a warning. They'd have to go inside soon if the wind continued to rise. The air was hot, crackling with energy. "You weren't wrong to choose a career, and I'd never have been happy acting, I see that now. You say I was good at it, and there were times when everything clicked, and yeah, I loved it, but the rest of the time… It was a job." Lee paused and added regretfully, "We wouldn't have worked out, either. Took me this long to see that, but we wouldn't. Not for long. If we'd stayed together, we couldn't have been a couple openly, and that— I don't see me being able to accept that. I did at the time because people like Ben told me I had to, but I never liked it."

"I'm too used to it, I guess," Ash said.

"That sucks," Lee said flatly. "I'm not going back to that. The first reporter to ask me about my love life gets a straight answer—no pun intended."

"Even if she asks you who you're involved with?" Ash asked, tensing up as he waited for Lee to reply.

Lee shook his head. "Don't worry, I won't out you. None of their business. Hell, none of my sex life is their business, but I don't care if they know I'm gay any more than I care if they know my favorite color's blue.”

"Because when the movie's over, you're walking off the set and heading back to Normal, population whatever."

"That's right." Lee cupped Ash's face. "Enough with the serious talk. Why don't we finish what we started? I don't know why you've waited this long to show me your bedroom, but—"

"Because I want you to fuck me," Ash said. He stroked Lee's side, caressing the smooth hot skin and longing to feel it against his body. "I was giving you time to recover."

Lee laughed, his eyes sparkling. "You've got to be kidding me. I haven't had sex in months for one thing, and if I'd been at an orgy every night this week, it's _you_. If you don't know by now that you can get me hard by being in the same room… I was ready to go again before we got to the kitchen from watching your ass while you were walking."

Ash shook his head, flattered and pleased. "Happy to be so inspiring."

"That's one word for it." Lee stretched his arms over his head, blatantly posing under the guise of working out the kinks in his back. "Bedroom?"

"This way," Ash said and pushed Lee in front of him. "My turn to watch your ass."

"But I don't know where I'm going," Lee protested, glancing back with a grin.

"The house isn't that big." Ash swatted Lee's ass to get him walking. "Move it. I've waited long enough."

"That was your fault," Lee said, and for a moment they were trapped in the past again, Ash's breath stuck in his throat so that he felt suffocated, but then Lee added, "You were the one who wanted a drink, not me," and the world unfroze.

_65 INT York's penthouse._

_DOLAN [sips from his can of soda] This is a lot to take in._

_YORK I don't blame you for thinking I'm nuts._

_DOLAN Good to know, because I do. A tattoo only you and me can see? That's insane._

_YORK It's not a tattoo. [holds out his arm] Here, look at it. It…it glows. It moves. Tell me what tattoo can do that._

_DOLAN [walks over, peers closely at York's arm] You'd better not be playing me, mister._

_[FX shot of hourglass spinning.]_

_Dolan's eyes widen. He steps back, turns, and runs for the door._

_YORK Hey! Kid, come back here. Please—_

_The door slams. He's gone._

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Fourteen

Filming the next day went well. Part of Lee was surprised it was that easy to fix the problem, but acting opposite Ash hours after crawling out of his bed, sleepy and sated, was as fulfilling as the sex. Each line he said was met with one from Ash spoken at the right moment, with the precise emotional impact. Ben was purring with a smugly satisfied air about him, the crew was appreciative of the reduced number of retakes, and Lee was riding the high that he'd once been addicted to and loving every minute.

The only difficulty came when Ash needed to lean over his shoulder, reading a letter on the table between Lee's hands. Lee's body responded with a rush of arousal, Ash's scent and body heat combining with his voice to make Lee glad that, sitting as he was, no one could see he was half-hard. He stumbled over the line and had enough control to flash an apologetic grin at an exasperated Ben. "Sorry. I kept screwing that line up when I read this scene through to myself. Can we do something with the 'since I saw him on Saturday' line?"

"Yeah," Ben said drily. "You can say it right, how's that?"

Lee shook his head and shot Ben a rueful look. "I'll do my best."

He nailed the line, acutely aware of Ash's amusement, however well hidden, and they finished the scene, the last before lunch, without any further problems.

"So what did I do to make you lose it?" Ash murmured as they walked off set, heading with the crowd toward the area set aside to dispense food to the hungry masses. Lee reminded himself Stan would know if he _looked_ at the muffins and resigned himself to salad again.

"Nothing in particular," Lee said, not troubling to deny that Ash was the cause of his lapse in concentration. "I got to thinking about you spread out on that bed of yours begging me to put my cock in you, and my mind wandered."

The way Ash breathed in sharply told Lee that he wasn't the only one having flashbacks. "How hungry are you anyway?"

"We can't skip eating," Lee warned him. "It's going to be a long day, and if your stomach starts rumbling at the wrong moment and fucks with the sound…"

Ash sighed. "Fine, so we grab a burger, but eat fast, will you? I can't go all day without getting my hands on you."

"This morning didn't count?" Lee asked, teasing Ash and liking the fact he could do that again.

They'd fallen asleep after a perfunctory cleanup, the last thing Lee remembered being a snuffled snore from Ash, who was sprawled out on his back, taking up the king-size bed. Exhaustion had made Lee's sleep deep and empty of dreams, but he'd woken thirty minutes before the alarm and found Ash watching him. The room had been dim, the faint light of dawn seeping through the blinds, but the yearning in Ash's eyes was unmistakable. Without a word spoken, they'd moved into each other's arms, slow kisses turning into slow sex, the urgency of yesterday replaced by something less desperate but equally intense.

Last night, Ash had spread his legs wide and lifted them high, taking Lee's cock deep inside him, the strain on his face melting into pleasure only toward the end. Ash had told Lee that it'd been years since he’d been fucked, and Lee believed it. They'd both come, they'd both enjoyed it, but the sense of a target missed by inches had left Lee determined to do it again as soon as Ash was ready for it, and do it better.

Mindful of how raw Ash would be feeling and the merciless ticking of the clock, Lee hadn't done more than stroke lightly over Ash's ass, a comforting caress. It was too early to be fumbling for lube and a condom, anyway. Ash had grasped Lee's erection and Lee had mirrored him, the heated skin of Ash's cock branding his palm.

So easy to fall back into familiar patterns. They'd rarely woken up in the same bed, but they'd jerked each other off like that, lying, standing, dozens of times, and Lee hadn't needed to think about what to do to make Ash gasp and groan and come with a shudder of relief and gratitude.

"This morning was great," Ash said, his half-smile inward enough to make Lee want to see what Ash’s imagination had conjured, "but you're like peanuts, babe. I always want to grab another handful."

"First we eat," Lee said, joining the line for food. Ben refused to have a separate line for his stars unless he needed them to eat fast and get back on set to do a run-through before the lunch break ended.

"Anything but jelly beans." Ash picked up a tray and handed it to Lee before taking another for himself.

Lee snickered and grabbed a bottle of water. Still, not fizzy. The last thing he needed was a case of hiccups. "I think Ben's banned them from the set, hell, the lot in general."

Driven to spluttering fury the morning before when Lee had been incapable of saying a line with the precise enunciation Ben required, Adler had strode over to the bowl of jelly beans and pelted Lee with them, flinging them with an accuracy that did him credit. The assault had ended with Lee holding up his hands in surrender, then snatching a green one out of the air. He'd chewed it with an impish grin that eventually brought an answering one from Ben, but the fun and games hadn't done anything to ease his headache.

Sleep and sex with Ash had worked wonders, though.

They assembled a tray of food and sat at the first table with available spaces. Lee didn't recognize anyone among the crew members around the table, but Ash collected a few nods and the atmosphere was welcoming enough.

As they ate, Ash began chatting to the man beside him, a lighting tech who'd worked on a production with Ash. Lee concentrated on eating his salad without visible haste, warmed by the occasional nudge from Ash's foot against his, a silent communication running parallel to the spoken.

When their plates were empty, Ash stood, with Lee a moment behind him, his body tight with anticipation.

"See you later, guys."

"There's a lunchtime poker game on if the two of you want in," the tech said.

Ash shook his head, smiling with an easy friendliness. "You took me for plenty last time we played, John. I'm older and wiser now. Besides, we've got some new lines to run through. Why don't you get the writers to sit in, and that way they can't keep changing the scenes on us."

John snorted. "You've got to be kidding me. Those guys are like vampires—take them out of that cupboard they live in and they'll probably combust."

"Don't tempt me into testing that theory," Lee said, earning a grin from the man.

They walked away, a careful distance between them, not hurrying, and made it to Ash's trailer without being stopped. Everyone was too busy refueling or finding a free bathroom to chat.

When the trailer door closed behind them, Lee exhaled. "God, we shouldn't be doing this."

"We shouldn't be talking, you mean," Ash countered. "We have to be back on set in forty minutes."

Lee abandoned the attempt to persuade Ash not to get naked. When he was in favor of it himself, it seemed a little stupid.

"We can't get too sweaty and mussed up," he warned.

Ash shrugged. "Don't tell me you've forgotten how this works."

No, Lee hadn't forgotten. Clothes had to come off if they were wearing something from Wardrobe, to keep them fresh. Creased and spotted with spunk wouldn't fly. Kissing had to be kept to a minimum. Someone from makeup would be touching up their faces anyway, because they'd eaten and hours under the lights played havoc with the most hardwearing cosmetics, but kissed lips looked different, the lines subtly fuller, and stubble left marks on tender skin. Blow jobs were risky for the same reason, but, always assuming there was a toothbrush and mouthwash handy, they could be the tidiest option.

Fucking was out. It left too much evidence behind, and if someone knocked at the door and it took too long to open it…

All the rules of the game were still valid, but all Lee could think about right then was how many times they'd broken them. Every single one. They were older now, wiser, and he could go back to Ash's house again tonight and they'd have hours to fuck and talk. They didn't need to do this here and now, but Ash was already stripping, draping his clothes on a chair, arranging them in the order they'd need to be grabbed if he had to dress in a hurry. Lee's mouth went dry with longing.

In the confines of the trailer, the blinds tightly closed, the door locked, Ash stood so close Lee smelled him, his heated skin exuding a scent that was pure male. Lee wanted to fall to his knees, not to worship, but to get closer to Ash's cock as it rose and hardened, but he held back until they were both naked. By the time he'd taken off his clothes, every doubt—not that he'd had many—had vanished.

"What do you want to do?" he murmured, keeping his voice low as he moved in for a hug that was an excuse to run his hands down Ash's long back to an ass that was still firm and tight.

"We did it my way last night," Ash murmured back, cupping Lee's face with a tenderness that seemed as real as the nudge of his erection against Lee's stomach, "but if you're offering, there's something you do that I've missed…"

Ash moved his hands to Lee's shoulders and pushed down, with Lee already heading for the floor at the first touch. Blowing Ash was one of his favorite things, way higher up the list than mittens on kittens or whatever the lyrics to that song were. Ash became incoherent with his dick disappearing down Lee's throat, groaning out his appreciation with fervent sincerity, and treating Lee like something precious for hours afterward. Fucking him didn't have the same effect. Ash loved it, sure, but he treated that more as a quid pro quo, which was fair enough. Lee had tried to tell him that he got a huge kick out of blow jobs, but Ash had never gotten over the idea that Lee was doing him a favor, even when Lee split his attention between sucking Ash's dick and jerking himself off at the same time.

He did that now, as soon as he had a rhythm going, one hand jerking himself off expertly—lots of practice—and the other wrapped around the base of Ash's cock or moving to cup and roll Ash's balls.

When Ash stopped him and pulled back, it was like being woken by a bucket of ice water in the face. Lee blinked, wiped his mouth dry with the back of his hand, and looked up. "Huh?"

"I don't want anyone to make you come but me," Ash said, a frown creasing his forehead. "Come into the bedroom."

Feeling mildly exasperated—Ash had tasted so fucking good, and the ache in his jaw, God, he'd missed that—Lee followed Ash into the bedroom, not much bigger than the double bed it housed.

Ash lay back against the pillows, and, feeling awkward but aroused by the gleam in Ash's eyes, Lee curled up next to him. Finding a position that allowed him to suck Ash and put his cock within reach of Ash's hand involved some squirming around, but Lee was limber enough. He didn't bother suggesting that they went for the simpler option of a sixty-nine. Ash had never liked those, claiming that they were too distracting.

"Either I'm concentrating so much on making you happy that I'm not paying attention to anything you're doing, or I'm getting off on fucking your mouth and neglecting _you_."

Lee had tried to argue him around a few times, then given up.

There was something about the novelty of the position that was intriguing, though Ash's cock suffered a few scrapes from Lee's teeth until Lee adjusted to the new angle. Ash stroked and squeezed him erratically, sometimes too hard when Ash was responding to whatever Lee's tongue was doing, sometimes doing no more than clasping him loosely when Ash got distracted. The uncertainty was a turn-on, and Lee got off on the need to wordlessly ask for more by rubbing his dick against Ash's palm or whining a protest around the cock filling his mouth.

They were close now, Ash's breath coming in short, choppy gasps, Lee's climax a fingertip out of reach. He needed Ash's hand to clutch a little tighter, move a little faster…

Ash came with a stifled grunt, cum spurting against the back of Lee's throat, and the taste and smell of it was all Lee needed, after all. He drove his cock through the circle of Ash's fingers, once, twice, and then came, dragging his mouth off Ash because he needed to breathe, needed to cry out.

"God, you are so fucking hot," Ash said with an exhausted intensity, stroking Lee's hair, long enough now to curl against his head. "Love that. Love you."

"Don't say that," Lee told him, rolling away, the post-climax euphoria he'd been enjoying snuffed out like a flame. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his cum-smeared dick, limp now and looking vulnerable and pathetic. "I don't need to hear it."

"I'm not saying it to make you happy." Ash stroked Lee's back. "I'm saying it because it's true. I've loved you for ten years. More."

"This is a fresh start, remember?" Lee said harshly. "We're starting over. You work up to being in love with someone. It doesn't happen in a week."

Ash snatched back his hand. "Fine. Let me know when we reach the point where I _am_ allowed to be in love with you and I'll send flowers to mark the occasion. Until then, we can have mindless sex and treat each other like shit."

"Ash," Lee began, turning his head. "I didn't mean—"

"We'd better get dressed," Ash said flatly and used a handful of tissues from a box on the shelf above the bed to wipe Lee's cum from his thigh and belly with a fastidious curl of his lip. "And I need to shower. We've got to be back on set soon."

"Does this mean I don't get to meet Conchita tonight at dinner?" Lee asked, well aware of how much hurt lay hidden behind the ice. Ash didn't take rejection well, and it was difficult to get him to open up. Lee still felt he was justified in applying a reality check, but it didn't stop him from suffering a pang or two of guilt. He edged closer, ignoring Ash's averted profile, and slipped an arm around Ash, kissing his way across what he could see of Ash's face until Ash unwillingly, reluctantly, grudgingly, turned his head to let Lee have his mouth.

The kiss started out as an apology and turned wet and dirty a few moments later. Desire, renewed and sharp, lay behind every slip-slide of their mouths, every lick and bite they exchanged. Sanity came only when their watches beeped, signaling ten minutes before they had to be back on set.

"Fuck," Lee said, heartfelt and regretful.

"Yeah," Ash said, skating his thumb over the slick head of Lee's cock, a wave goodbye. "Hold that thought until after Conchita's finished feeding us tonight?"

Lee hid a relieved smile against Ash's neck and nodded. "Consider it held."

They cleaned themselves and the bedroom, then dressed with an efficiency that, once learned, was never forgotten. After they gave each other a cursory once-over, Ash opened the door, with Lee on his heels. Ash stopped dead, and Lee peered over his shoulder to see what was holding him up.

"Mr. Morden?" Natasha said sweetly from the bottom of the steps leading up to the door, her clipboard held to her chest. "And I see Mr. Simons is with you too."

Ash stayed where he was, claiming the high ground, Lee guessed. "What is it, Nicola?"

"Natasha," she said with a hint of steel showing behind the tentative smile that, given what Lee knew of her, looked incredibly fake now. "Mr. Adler would like you back on set to run through a scene before you go back to hair and makeup."

"We're on our way," Ash told her. "Why don't you go ahead and tell him that?"

Lee watched Natasha's gaze travel from Ash's face to his, the speculation in her eyes unmistakable, as was the hostility. Lee saw her crush on him dying on the vine. Fuck. The two of them being in a trailer wasn't evidence of anything, but there was always gossip floating around, and if she'd done some digging on him and knew he was gay, well…

After a long moment, Natasha nodded stiffly and turned on her heel to stalk away, her spine straight, indignation clear in every stride.

"So what was that all about?" Ash asked, walking down the steps.

"She's got a crush on me," Lee said. "Offered me some stress relief a few days back and didn't take it well when I refused."

Ash whistled. "Her? She looks too sweet and innocent to go there."

Lee fell in step beside him as they headed for the soundstage, wondering if talking to Natasha would help or be the worst thing he could do. "In this town, they grow up fast."

  1. _IN. Dolan's apartment._



_The door bursts open and Dolan and York come in, moving fast. It's a desolate, beat-up place, but it's clean, and the bed Julie Dolan is lying on, a phone beside it, is covered with a colorful spread. Her eyes are closed and she looks close to death._

_DOLAN [rushes to her side] Julie! God, are you okay?_

_JULIE [whispers] Rob… It hurts. Hurts so bad._

_YORK I'll call 911, get someone over here—_

_DOLAN They won't take her— We can't afford— [takes a breath] Look, they know what's wrong, okay, but she needs an operation on her heart. We're talking thousands. I'm saving up, but—_

_YORK [shakes his head, pity deepening his voice as he takes in the scene] Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it._

_DOLAN We don't need your charity, rich guy._

_YORK [tersely] If you think I can walk away, you're wrong. I'm calling for an ambulance. Get what she'll need._

_DOLAN [bites his lip as the reality of the situation sinks in] I—I guess I could pay you back._

_YORK [dialing] Sure, kid, sure. Hello? Yes, we need an ambulance at Paradise Towers, on the corner of East and Rickman. Apartment 5B. A young woman's having a heart attack._

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Fifteen

"So what's the movie about?" Stan asked Ash. He took a sip of water from his glass. "Lee won't tell me anything approaching the truth. The last version of the plot had aliens landing and the earth blowing up."

"Not true," Lee called from the kitchen, where he was unpacking Chinese takeout from the delivery bag. "The aliens blew up York's penthouse."

Ash grinned, relaxing into Stan's sofa and letting the stress of the week fall away with every gulp of chilled beer. The city was gripped in a sultry heat that made him want to live under a shower, but Stan had fans placed strategically and the air wasn't only refreshingly cool but invigorating. In the last month, he'd spent several evenings here, enjoying the chance to be with Lee and someone else without the need to hide what they were to each other. Stan was a good friend to Lee, Ash had decided early on, protective without smothering and profoundly unimpressed by Ash's status.

The potential awkwardness of their first real meeting when the three of them had met for drinks at a bar was defused by Stan's calm acceptance of Ash in Lee's life, but Ash wasn't under any illusions Stan trusted him completely. There was a faint wariness behind the friendliness. Ash was on probation as far as Stan was concerned. Ash accepted that with rare humility and privately thanked God that Lee was more forgiving.

Things between them were still fragile—the incredible sex helped—but every hour they spent together added another rock to the foundation they were building. With filming nearing an end, he worried about what he'd do when Lee went home, dreading it with a sick lurch in his gut. If that wasn't love, he didn't know what was, but Lee still refused to let Ash say the words.

"No aliens," Ash told Stan. "Plenty of visions and mystical goings-on, though."

Stan nodded. "I've seen a few episodes here and there. You and Lee had some nice chemistry, but I was watching mostly for that Alura lady. Babe was _hot_."

Ash snorted. "You weren't alone. She got more fan mail than we did. Why a woman living in a cave dressed in see-through silky stuff beats me."

"Is she in the movie?"

"In a way," Lee called from the kitchen. Ash wished Lee would hurry up and finish transferring food to the table. He'd offered to help and been firmly turned down, which wouldn't have mattered, but he was starving. The smell of lemon chicken and _moo goo gai pan_ floating past his nose was pure torture. "She— Fuck, I dropped the rice. No, pretend you didn’t hear that."

"She left acting after the show ended," Ash supplied, as Lee presumably salvaged what he could of a container of fried rice.

"Like me," Lee said.

"Not at all like you, unless there's something you're not telling us. She had triplets. Three girls."

"So Adler couldn't get her back?"

"Oh, he could, but he took one look at her, and let's say soccer moms don't give off a mystical vibe. So he got around it with a rewrite—"

"Number thirty-six," Lee said with a tinge of bitterness Ash shared.

"And since he couldn't make her look young enough, he pushed her the other way and aged her. White hair, wrinkles, dying."

"Alura dies?" Stan shook his head and looked sad. "Man, I _liked_ her."

"Don't tell anyone," Ash cautioned him, and got an affronted stare that had him backtracking swiftly. "Sorry, sorry… Yeah, she dies, and that's what kicks it all off because she wishes that York could be happy. She's been keeping track of him—"

"And that's why I come back," Lee said, walking over with two bowls in his hand. He deposited them on a beautifully laid table and went back for the third. "Poor little Stevie needs his Robbie-bear to find true happiness."

Lee was joking, but the truth was too close to the fiction for Ash to do more than give Stan a twisted smile as they stood and walked over to the table. "Something like that. Once the two of them are back together, it's pretty much like an episode, any episode."

"So why did Rob go in the first place?" Stan asked as they sat to eat. "I never saw the ending."

Stan was using chopsticks, and each place setting consisted of a delicate blue and white bowl rather than a plate, but Ash was too hungry to forgo a fork even if it did look too big for the bowl. He helped himself to the closest dish, took a mouthful of fried chicken coated in tangy sauce, and moaned with pleasure. "God, that's good."

"Try the sweet and sour chicken next," Stan suggested. "No one does that like Yau Wing."

"If you're forcing me to," Ash said with a grin.

Lee dealt deftly with a slippery noodle and washed it down with a swig of beer. "Rob left because he found out what Steve had done to save his life back in season one."

"I remember that bit. You fell off a roof." Stan pointed his chopstick accusingly at Lee. "Careless of you."

"I was pushed off it!" Lee said indignantly. "By a corrupt businessman scared Steve would expose him to the shareholders or something."

"So I saved him, with your girlfriend's help," Ash told Stan, "and then Rob finds out months later that the cost wasn't a day of Steve's life, but something much worse."

"Is there the part when someone says 'dun-dun- _dun_?’" Stan inquired.

Ash exchanged a glance with Lee and they intoned the words together, cracking up at the end, with Stan smiling indulgently.

"How much worse is much worse?"

"Steve dies when Rob does," Ash said succinctly because he'd tried the sweet and sour and it was as good as advertised and he wanted more.

"Rob freaks and takes off. The end," Lee said with equal brevity.

"You two sure know how to take all the excitement out of something," Stan complained.

"It's all covered in the movie for the three people who're gonna watch it who _don't_ know the show," Lee said with a shrug. "It's gonna bomb so bad, I bet no one pirates it. Why bother when it's going to be in the sale bins within the month, marked _way_ down."

Ash gave Lee a sidelong glance, surprised by the mood swing from effervescent to depressed. Lee looked tired, but so did everyone on set. Ben was pushing them, eager to finish the project and move on to something with a chance of making him some money, Ash assumed.

"You're done, right?" Stan asked, his voice subdued as if he'd picked up on Lee's mood too.

"Another week or so on location before the editing starts, then Ben says we can take off as long as we don't go far, in case something needs reshooting or dubbing."

"I'm going home," Lee said flatly, not looking at Ash. "A friend's been swinging by now and then to make sure the place is okay, but I want to see for myself. I can be back in three hours, easy, if Ben needs me."

Ash had been looking forward to some uninterrupted time with Lee, and this was news to him. He opened his mouth to protest, and ask half a dozen questions, and got a gentle kick on the ankle from Stan that shut him up.

Fine. Let Lee pack his fucking bags and head back to his old life before he needed to. Ash, simmering with hurt annoyance, began to make plans for a party, a big one, the kind where he could get drunk and have his pick of anyone there, maybe someone who looked like Lee used to, long black hair, sparkling brown eyes, lips that didn't know how to do anything but smile and suck cock like a dream…

That fantasy bubble held its shape for about ten seconds. Ash glanced across at Lee, the current version, the original, and knew no one else would do, ever. Lee was still gorgeous, though he'd lost the belief in his invincibility that had put that sparkle in his eyes, but Ash didn't care about that. This Lee was older, sure, but hell, so was Ash. He didn't want to wake up in bed with anyone but Lee, he didn't want to party without Lee there in the room, and he didn't want to go out on dates with women who were using him as much as he was using them.

With a muttered excuse, he got to his feet and went into Stan's bathroom, leaving an awkward silence behind him. He didn't need to take a leak, but he did need to be alone for a few minutes to deal with the revelation that he couldn't handle life without Lee.

If this was a movie, the script would call for him to splash water on his face, stare at his reflection in the mirror, or maybe punch a wall. Ash didn't want to do any of those things, which went to show how artificial scripts were. He sat on the toilet, with the seat down, and stared at the floor, a spotless white tile, subtly patterned with swirls and with an iridescent gleam. His hands were damp and he felt lightheaded. Was this how Lee had felt? Guilt hit Ash like a wave, drowning him. He'd told Lee not to come with him. Broken Lee's heart, and now Lee was returning the favor. Lee had come back into Ash's life, shown him what he could have if he wasn't so fucking obsessed with his career and what people would say, and now Lee was vanishing again and this time it was Ash who'd be broken-hearted.

Losing Lee the first time had hurt and Ash had never gotten over him, but he'd survived, even been happy most of the time. Not _this_ time, though.

Ash moaned, the sound loud in the small space. He didn't know what to do. His agent ran his life, got him new projects to work on, and once those projects began, Ash did what the director or producer told him.

"Like a trained fucking monkey," he muttered. "They should pay me in bananas."

Giving up that life to share Lee's more mundane one wasn't an option, though. Ash _liked_ being a star, and he loved acting. He wasn't ready to retire and be featured in a “where are they now?” article a decade down the road. Knowing his Oscar, the high point of his career, was a long way behind him and his future prospects were dimming, not brightening, didn't make him want to walk away with dignity at—almost—the top of his game. Like most actors, Ash was grimly determined to cling to the rock as the tide tried to wash him away.

He couldn't lock himself in the bathroom indefinitely. Ash stood and couldn't resist one quick peek in the mirror. He looked tired, like Lee, he noted with detachment, but this morning he'd glowed despite that, and now he looked… He turned away from the mirror before he could complete the thought, but despite that, the word _older_ slid uninvited into his head and refused to be dislodged.

He went back to the table in as dark a mood as Lee and finished the congealing contents of his bowl in a moody silence, responding with monosyllables when Stan—not Lee—tried to talk to him.

"I'm going to make it an early night," Ash announced when the meal had mercifully ended. He gave Lee a brief, tight smile. "Guess I'll see you on location Monday morning. We're doing the forest scene, right?"

He waited for Lee to point out that this was Saturday night and they'd planned to spend it together at Ash's place after eating with Stan, as well as all of Sunday, but Lee shrugged.

"Fine," Ash snarled. He turned to Stan, determined not to forget his manners. If the poor guy was about to get stuck with Lee in an angst-filled pout, he deserved at least a thank-you. "Thanks for the meal."

"You two make Romeo and Juliet seem sane," Stan said with a sigh, refusing to go along with the charade that everything was normal. "Look, it's obvious you need to talk this out—or fight it out—so why don't you go ahead and do it? Don't mind me; I only live here, after all."

"There's nothing to discuss," Ash said, addressing Stan pointedly. "Lee can't wait to get back to sleeping on the floor and living out of boxes and forgetting I exist. That's cool. I get it."

Lee snorted. "Yeah, like an ego the size of a small planet is easy to forget."

" _What_ ego?" Ash said, rounding on him. "I'm sharing the billing with you, in case it's escaped your notice. Don't think that my agent didn't give me hell for agreeing to that."

"The ego that makes me wanting to go home for a break all about _you_ ," Lee snapped. "Didn't it occur to you that I'm not used to this circus and I'm tired? I need a break, Ash. From this town, the cameras, Ben screaming at me—"

"From me?" Ash asked, the words choking him.

Stan rolled his eyes, picked up some dishes, and moved away to the kitchen area, still in earshot, but giving them the illusion of semi-privacy at least.

Lee shook his head, and some of the tension left Ash as he realized Lee was as upset as he was. "No. Jesus, Ash, you're the only reason I've lasted this long, you know that, but I'm not sure I can take much more of it. The pace is crazy and it never lets up. I'm not a kid anymore. I don't want to party until dawn, and keep going with the help of whatever designer drug's in style. I don't _like_ doing drugs."

"You don't have to," Ash said. "But don't go before you have to. Shit, Lee, I thought we could spend the time off together, hole up at my place."

Lee gave him a twisted smile. "And never get out of bed?"

Ash shrugged. "Sure, if that's what you want, but it stopped being about the sex for me weeks ago. I never get the chance to talk to you, Lee. Or do normal stuff with you, like eating out or—or shopping." He stopped, aware of how lame he sounded. Shopping? For fuck’s sake.

"You don't have a normal life," Lee said gently. "You don't grocery shop, or fix a leaking faucet, or cut the grass. You don't take your car to be serviced. Hell, I bet you don't put gas in it."

"Yes, I fucking do," Ash said hotly. "I have Conchita and yeah, a yard service, but that's it. If I get a leak, I call a plumber, but who doesn't? Stop making me out to be some hothouse flower, helpless to deal with anything by myself."

"Sorry," Lee said after a moment. "I guess I was exaggerating there."

"Yeah," Ash agreed, still steaming over Lee's unflattering assessment of his abilities. "So you want to go back home and hammer in some nails? Fine, but how come I don't get an invitation?"

"You?" Lee said, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "You want to come back with me and work on the house?"

From the kitchen area, Stan muttered, “Oh, this is gonna be good,” but Ash ignored him.

"Hell, yes. I did shop in high school. I can saw wood and hammer nails, though I don't know much about wiring and plumbing. And I painted scenery when I was a teenager trying to get a part in summer theater. Give me a brush or a roller and I can get the paint where it needs to go."

He'd finally gotten his chance at a part by the simpler method of blowing the director, an affair that'd lasted for two weeks until the play had folded. It’d left him with a vague sense of shame and resentment because he'd been perfect for the part and he shouldn't have needed to beg for it on his knees. Literally.

Lee moved close enough for Ash to touch him, something he couldn't help doing. When they were on set, it took a real effort not to run his hand down Lee's back or pat his ass. Ash loved the way Lee responded instinctively to a caress, as sleekly content as a stroked cat. Ash put his hand on Lee's shoulder and pulled him closer, brushing a kiss over Lee's lips. "Take me with you," he said coaxingly. "Show me this house of yours. No one will know we're there, and we can relax after you've put in some hours renovating, maybe walk along the beach, go antiquing…"

"You'll be bored in a day," Lee prophesied.

"With you wandering around in nothing but an itty-bitty pair of shorts and a tool belt? I don't think so."

Stan snorted, reminding them they had an audience. "If the two of you turn up back at the studio with more of a tan than you left with, Adler will freak if he needs to reshoot a scene."

"He's got a point," Lee said.

"So I slather you up with sunscreen," Ash said with a leer. "Not a problem."

"Okay, enough," Stan said firmly. "If the flirting's started, I guess the fireworks are over. Why don't the two of you do what you said you were doing and get your asses over to Ash's for the night? I can't take it when the hearts and flowers start. You two are plain mushy."

Ash didn't feel mushy, but he did want to get Lee alone with no one listening to them. They needed to talk, and he wanted to share his feelings with Lee. He'd told Lee that he loved him before and been shot down, and he could see why. Lee had wanted more from him, and now Ash had it to give. He pictured Lee saying the words back to him, and he pictured them making love, the windows open and the sound of the ocean filling the room, Lee pressed close, their passion deepened by their shared declaration.

Okay, maybe he _was_ getting sentimental, because that was too mushy for a Hallmark card, but what the hell—he was in love; wasn't he entitled to be?

They left Stan to finish clearing up—a small example of selfishness that Ash refused to add to the list of things he felt guilty about—and made their way downstairs. When they exited the building into the soft, golden light of early evening, honey-sweet and rich, Ash gave way to an impulse and spun Lee around, kissing him full on the mouth with an exuberance that left no room for doubts or worries. They loved each other. They'd work this out.

  1. _INT. Dolan's apartment._



_DOLAN [clutching Julie's hand, tears falling unnoticed down his face, turns to York] You! Do something. Save her._

_YORK [gently] Rob, she's gone. There's nothing anyone could have done._

_DOLAN You said you can wish, make things better. Bullshit, I know it is, but—please, you've gotta try. [stands, grabs York's arms] Do it! Wish, goddamn it, wish her back with me._

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Sixteen

The article's headline read “WISH AND MAKE UP?”, the bold lettering a visual shout. Under it was a blurred but clear enough snapshot of Ash kissing Lee outside Stan's place and some nudge-nudge writing, sickeningly coy and intrusive.

Lee stared at the photograph, read the first paragraph with a shudder of revulsion, then tossed the magazine in the direction of the trash can by Ben's desk. It missed, but the trash can was overflowing anyway.

"Four days," Ben said. "Four more days of shooting, maybe some retakes, and then you'd have been gone until I needed you for the promotion in a few months. We were _this close_." He held up his hand, his finger and thumb almost touching.

"I'm not going to apologize," Lee said. "You kicked up such a fucking fuss that I kept my mouth shut about being gay whenever I was interviewed, but I'm not going to act like I did something wrong."

"Spare me the rainbow rhetoric," Ben said bitterly. "Kid, you think I give a fuck if you're gay? I don't. All that I care about is my goddamn movie, and this is gonna kill it dead before it's made and break my little girl's heart."

"Uh, I think she knows I'm gay," Lee said awkwardly. "And no, it wasn't something I brought up, believe me. She ate lunch with me her last day on the set and asked me about it. I tried to brush her off and she said her teacher had told them all about alternative lifestyles and was I gay or bisexual." He held up his hands in appeal. "Jesus, Ben, isn't she, like, in sixth grade?"

Ben sighed. "She brought home a word-search puzzle for homework with the names of twenty drug-related words in it. When she asked me what a mule was, I thought she meant a fucking donkey at first." He shook his head. "Whatever. She's a sensible kid and she survived Ms. Hendricks's class. What's gonna break her heart isn't you being gay, for God's sake. I brought her up better than that. No, it's the movie never getting released."

"Why wouldn't it be released?" Lee asked, genuinely baffled. "You're the one financing it. Sure, we're going to get some bad publicity from the jerks out there, but the real victim here is Ash. I don't care who knows I'm gay, but he does."

"Yeah," Ben said. "Where is he, anyway?"

Lee shrugged. "I spent the night at Stan's because we were wiped after the shoot. I was on my way to the location this morning when I got your call and came here instead."

The call sheets had been for a stunt involving a disused factory about twenty miles away from the studio. Ash and Lee were needed for close-ups, but the stunt was beyond their capabilities, and for the bulk of the day they would've been hanging around.

"I called him before I called you and he should be here by now," Ben snapped.

On cue, timing it to perfection, Ash walked in. One look at his blank face told Lee that Ash knew what the meeting was about, though Ben's message to Lee had been discretion itself. Lee rose and walked to meet Ash.

"Ash, I don't know how this happened, but I'm sorry."

Ash held up his hand to ward Lee off, which hurt like hell. "I know. I can't— I need time to process, okay?"

The words were trite, but Lee guessed Ash was on autopilot, his attention focused, not on Lee, but on Ben. That didn't hurt—Lee understood that when it came to damage control, Ben would be more useful than he could be—but it felt odd. Ash had been all over Lee recently, lavishing him with a love that Lee still couldn't quite bring himself to accept as the forever kind, much though he wanted to. If he walked on set, Ash turned to him, smiled. If he was at Ash's house, Ash was close to him, touching him, hovering nearby. It should've felt smothering, but it didn't. Something told Lee it would ease off once Ash was sure of Lee, but given the complete lack of certainty about their future, that wouldn’t happen. Lee was happy to tell Ash that he loved him, because he did, and as happy to hear Ash say it to him with a new sincerity, but it was all minute by minute between them.

Now it looked as if the fleeting happiness they'd miraculously managed to recreate was about to end.

"I spoke to your agents first," Ben said when Ash and Lee were sitting. "Claudia was pissed as hell, naturally, and Joe was…" He winced. "Upset."

"Of course he is," Ash said with a deadly calm. "I'm his most lucrative client. Or I was."

"You people," Lee said with disgust. "This is not the end of the fucking world, okay? I'm gay, Ash is gay. We're together. So what? We're not the only ones out there who—"

"You want to know why my phone isn't ringing off the hook?" Ben demanded, interrupting Lee. He picked up his phone in one hand and the unattached lead in the other. "I unplugged it, that's why. In this town, people care. Not about you," he told Lee, "because they don't know you, but they care about _him_." He nodded at Ash. "And since you're not only gay but seeing each other, that's all that anyone watching is going to think about when they see you kissing your love interests in the movie."

"So rewrite it," Lee said recklessly. "The subtext's there if Alura decided me in Steve's life will make him happy. Go for it and end it on us kissing."

Ash made a small, pained noise that didn't sound at all like a ringing endorsement of the idea, and Ben stared at him as if Lee had lost his mind.

"The movie's for kids. Dying kids."

"No, it's not," Lee said, refusing to buy into the manufactured hype. "It's for Samantha and a couple of thousand fans of the show, if there're that many of them still around. It's a giant present for them and it means nothing to anyone else. Forget the goddamn movie and think about Ash."

Ash stood, moving as if he'd forgotten how to make his arms and legs work together. "It doesn't matter about me," he said wearily. "We'll finish the movie, Ben can get the tax write-off he planned all along, and I can disappear. Become invisible."

Lee felt a scream build inside him. "Can you both please get some fucking perspective here?" he begged them. "I've been living outside this fishbowl world of yours, and it's moved on out there. Maybe not much, but enough to make this a non-issue. Hell, play up the romance if you want, turn it into a positive thing. Take the wind out of their sails. But don't expect me to fucking apologize or explain or grovel because I won't do it. I'm out of here if you do, and you can sue my ass for breach of contract, I don't give a shit."

Ben sucked air through his teeth and got a pensive look about him that was vaguely encouraging. Ash sat slumped in gloom, Lee in a fairly patient silence, while Ben cogitated.

"It might work," Ben said cautiously. "Attack, not defense… Yeah, I can get behind that. Let me think about it. You two get over to the shoot and tell Derek I'll let him film this scene. I'll come by when I've had a chat with your agents. Don't take your own cars. Go out by the west door and I'll have an unmarked van waiting. The last thing I want is the press at the shoot."

Derek Fillmore was a quietly capable director who'd been working as Ben's assistant on the movie. Lee wasn't sure what inducements Ben had used to get Derek, but the thought of a morning working in the efficient calm Derek preferred was both restful and mildly boring. Both sounded appealing after the high-octane drama of the day so far.

Lee was about to haul Ash up and maybe drag him into a dark corner for some quick TLC—anything to get the dazed, stricken look out of Ash's eyes—when Ben held up his hand.

"One thing."

"What?" Ash said dully.

"How did they know to have a camera right there when you were coming out?"

Good question. Lee frowned. "I've been staying with Stan for months, but Ash is the only one I've brought back there and Stan's usually around. We're never usually there alone, and Ash doesn't stay the night."

"Could be one of those chance things," Ben said, "but it doesn't feel like it." He chewed at his thumbnail and then gave the ragged edge a disgusted look. "It feels personal. Anyone got a grudge? Old girlfriend, boyfriend?"

Ash shook his head and Lee did the same. "I've been living like a monk for months," Lee said and forced a grin. "Apart from Ash, the only one who's shown an interest in me is Natasha, and I blew her off weeks ago."

"Who the hell is Natasha?" Ben demanded.

"One of your PAs," Lee said. "You know, mousy, quiet—unless she's in your trailer offering you some stress relief. I think I blushed."

Ben snapped his fingers. "The jelly-bean girl! Yeah, I know who you mean."

"Jelly beans?" Lee asked. God, why had he ever come up with that stupid idea for a gimmick?

"She got them for you. Obviously has a crush."

"On me?" Lee realized that incredulity was pointless given the evidence. "Well, yeah, maybe, but I wasn't mean to her and I didn't tell her I was gay, either. I said I was too old for her—which I am—and that I was getting over a bad breakup." He glanced at Ash. "Which I was and I have."

"Doesn't mean you didn't piss her off," Ben said tersely. He plugged his phone back in and, when it immediately rang, unplugged it again. "Fuck."

He stood, strode to the door, and yanked it open. "Sylvie, stop filing your goddamn nails and get me Natasha," he said. "Skinny PA. Always looks scared. Now."

It took four minutes and thirty seconds for Natasha to scurry into Ben's office, her eyes wide and her throat working as if she were trying to swallow a golf ball. When she saw Ash and Lee, a flush, scalding red, crawled up from her neck to her cheeks and she burst into tears.

"Guess that saves me asking you any questions," Ben said with grim satisfaction. "So how much did they pay you to ruin my movie? Talk fast because you're fired and I don't usually let ex-employees hang around."

"I'm so, so sorry," Natasha jerked out between sobs. "I didn't know he'd do that, any of it. I was so, so sad." She took out a handful of tissues and blew her nose, then gave Lee a watery look of despair and reproach. "I was getting you coffee last week, the way you like it, even if you'd been so mean to me—"

"I didn't let you get naked and blow me," Lee said sharply. "Where I come from, that's being a gentleman, not an asshole."

A spark of resentment dried her tears. "What _ever_. You turned me down and Blake was super sweet when I was crying in the coffee shop and I didn't _know_ he was a reporter—"

"Every other person in that coffee shop is," Ben said. "It's the closest one to the studio and everyone goes there. You'd never have made it in this industry. You've gotta be able to smell the press."

"So I told him what you said and he said if you'd turned a pretty girl like me down, you had to be gay, and I got to thinking that maybe you were, so I watched you, and when you went into Mr. Morden's trailer _again_ , I, uh, I—"

Ben's mouth twisted in distaste. "Peeked through the window? Listened at the door?"

"I didn't need to!" Natasha waved her hand at Lee and Ash, tears spilling again, her face crumpled. "You can tell from looking at them, and I _hated_ it and I was so, so unhappy."

"You hated us being gay?" Lee demanded hotly. "What the hell is wrong with you? What business is it of yours?"

She stared at him, her mouth sagging open. "Being gay? No, why would I mind—" Outrage widened her eyes. "My _brother's_ gay, you asshole, so no, I don't care about that. It's the way the two of you are in love when I've got nuh-uh-no one and I luh-uh-loved you."

Her hiccupping sobs rose to a gusty, hysterical wail, and Ash stood, walked over to the cooler in the corner, and filled a small paper cup with water. Lee expected him to throw it over Natasha, but Ash offered it to her and stood watching her sip it and gradually regain some control.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, looking up at him. "I didn't think— This isn't something you wanted people to know, is it?"

Ash shook his head. "No. It's something I've kept hidden, but don't worry, Lee doesn't care. He's been out for years, so your reporter friend only has half a scoop."

Natasha turned to look at Lee. "You were out? Then why didn't you tell me that was why you didn't want me? I'd have understood that."

"That was my fault," Ben began, but Lee waved him to silence.

"No, Ben. She came on to me, uninvited and way too strong—Jesus, if she'd been a cute guy and I was single, I'd still have been put off by how pushy she was—and she got a truthful answer from me, which is more than she deserved. None of us owe her anything in the way of an apology." He rounded on Natasha. "Okay, I get that you probably didn't intend for this to happen, but it did and it's mostly your fault."

"I said I'm sorry, and I am," she said, her lips quivering. "Maybe if I called Blake, explained…"

"Do what the hell you want with your life," Ben said with finality, "but if I find out you've said word one to a reporter about one of _my_ actors, I'll sue. Now go and wait by Sylvie's desk until a security guard arrives to walk you off the lot."

Natasha looked at them, woebegone and tearful, then nodded and left, her head drooping like a wilted flower. Lee felt a pang of sympathy, but one look at Ash extinguished it.

"So," Ben said, striking his hands together briskly. "We go to work and spin this shit into gold."

Lee wasn't sure that was possible, but if anyone could do it, Ben could.

  1. _INT. Dolan's apartment._



_YORK [helpless] I can't bring her back from the— I don't have the power. Alura told me—_

_DOLAN [yelling, pushing at York] I don't want to hear it! Wish, damn you, wish for me. Save her._

_York [pushes Dolan away gently] I'll try, okay? [He concentrates.] I wish that Julie was alive again, healthy, well. I wish it._

_They both stare at his arm. Nothing. Rob's lips quiver, and he collapses to the floor beside the bed, sobbing. York tries to comfort him, pats his shoulder. We can hear sirens in the background, the ambulance arriving too late._

_YORK Rob…_

_DOLAN Get out. Get the hell out._

_YORK I'm not leaving you like this._

_Dolan stands, goes to a drawer in a cupboard, pulls out a gun, aims it at York._

_DOLAN You're leaving._

_[Extract from the script of the pilot episode of_ Hourglass _. Air date September 8, 1998]_

Chapter Seventeen

Ash walked onto the stage and sat next to Lee without acknowledging the assembled journalists watching his every move or the cameras pointed at him.

Same stage, same people in the audience more or less, but everything had changed since the last time he'd been here for a press conference. He tried to concentrate on what had changed for the better since then. Lee wasn't likely to punch him, but that was about it.

Lee. Since the article, Ash had barely seen him outside of work. They'd finished the location shoots and wrapped the movie on schedule at the end of a fraught week, separating at the end of each night with an awkward smile. They hadn't fought or argued, but there was a gulf between them now, one that Ash didn't know how to bridge. Lee had tried to hug him, tried to kiss him after they'd left Ben's office, and Ash had frozen, panicked, his heart beating fast enough to hurt. No one had been around, but that didn't seem to matter to the voice in his head telling him that this was all his fault for that spur-of-the-moment kiss.

Lee had taken it for another rejection, but he'd reacted not with anger but with disappointment, something Ash found harder to bear. Common sense would've dictated that they didn't spend the night together until Ben had formulated a response to the photograph—there were press camped outside Ash's house and Stan's apartment anyway—but that wasn't the reason they were living separate lives.

Today was Saturday. They should've been in Lee's truck, heading north wearing jeans and T-shirts, with beer in the cooler and a week of work and fun ahead of them.

Ash flicked lint off his linen slacks and stared out at the audience with a bored half-smile on his lips. He was an actor. No one had to see his real feelings if he chose not to show them. At the back of the room, a lone friendly face caught his eyes: Stan, who'd been around all week on Claudia's orders, backed up by Ben's approval, drifting casually around the location sets and keeping an eye out for any reporters. Stan gave him a nod, barely moving his head, and went back to scanning the crowd.

Ben sauntered onto the stage a moment later, dressed not in one of his expensive suits but faded jeans and a frankly hideous shirt featuring parrots and palm trees. It might have been what Ben always wore on a Saturday morning when he wasn't working, but Ash doubted it. The casual clothing was a costume, and the message it sent was clear. This meeting wasn't important and Ben wasn't dressing up for it. "Everyone here? Thanks for coming, people. Thanks for all the calls too. I didn't answer any of them, but you know that. Can't have folks saying I play favorites, huh?"

"Are you going to answer questions now?" a man's voice called out.

Ben spread his hands. "Ask away."

"What truth is there in the allegations that your stars are gay and in a relationship?"

"Allegations?" Ash could only see Ben's profile, but he could hear the faux surprise in Ben's voice. "Wow, that sounds so serious. Like they've done something wrong. Is that what you're saying, Tim? That being gay—not that I'm saying they are—is wrong?"

"No, of course not, but—"

"We're talking about that picture of the two of them on the street, in broad daylight, goofing around, aren't we?" Ben said, his voice dropping to a confiding tone. "I could show you a hundred photos you guys have taken of them both kissing women, but you've seen one photo of them kissing each other and made a lot of soup from one oyster."

A mutter of protest rose from the crowd, and Ben shrugged. "What? They're actors, people. They're huggy, kissy-face actors. Comes of spending too much time in Europe making movies with subtitles, maybe, I don't know. I do know that one lousy photo proves nothing." Ben stabbed his finger at a cameraman in the second row. "You there. Focus on me. Ready?"

The cameraman nodded uncertainly. Ben smiled, spun around, and planted a kiss full on Ash's mouth. It was over too fast to register as a kiss—it felt more like a smack, but Ash made sure not to react with anything but a slightly wider smile.

"Got that?" Ben demanded. "Want to go and write a story about how I'm gay now? Or explain why two guys with reputations to protect would kiss out in the open seconds after leaving an apartment where they could've done a whole lot more than that with no one the wiser?"

"Mary Ellis here, Ben. So you're saying it's not true?"

Ben shook his head. "No, Mary, I'm not. I could do. I can see from the looks on your faces that some of you bought what I was saying and think this news comes from some hack trying to whip up gossip out of thin air. I could bury this story here and now, but I'm not the one who should be answering the questions. It's not my private life you vultures are poking at."

"The public has a right to know—"

"About what you do in the Condor Club every Tuesday night, Andy? You want that coming out? All the sick, sordid details? I can arrange it if you like." Ben sliced his hand through the air. "Ah, you make me want to puke. These two aren't politicians and they don't go all out for the publicity the way some actors do. They've got a right to their private lives, but fat chance of that now, huh? So I'm gonna shut up and let them talk, because believe me, they've got plenty they want to say to you."

Ash stood before Lee could and took a step forward. His voice didn't shake; his heart rate was normal. He'd practiced this speech, like lines in a scene. It wasn't Ash Morden talking but an actor who'd been outed and was taking a stand. Good meaty role, real tearjerker moment, but he had to be careful not to overplay it.

"Ten years ago, I was in a relationship with my co-star on _Hourglass_. It ended because I chose a career over him. I've always regretted what I did. A few months ago, you saw us reunited for the first time since I made that choice, and you saw him hit me. That punch was real, and so was what we had together. It took me some fast talking, but I got him to forgive me, and we're back together again. Yes, I'm gay and so is he, but if the reporter doing this piece had taken the time to do his research, he'd have discovered that Lee's been out for years. This was shoddy, sensational reporting of something that frankly isn't all that interesting to anyone but us, but by all means try and squeeze a few paragraphs out of it if it's a slow week."

He kept his tone light, amused. No sense in making enemies. It seemed to be working. A ripple of astonishment passed through the crowd, but he couldn't sense any outright hostility.

"And if you want me to kiss him again for a few more photos, less blurry this time, please, I'm happy to oblige," Lee called out, getting a genuine laugh.

Ben moved to the front of the stage as Ash sat again. "Okay, folks, these two have worked their asses off for me the last few months and they're taking some downtime. If you want to ask them some questions, you've got ten minutes, then they're—"

"Godless, unnatural freaks! You're going to burn in hell, all of you."

Ash surged to his feet, reacting not to the trite words that to his trained ears rang false, but the genuine hatred behind them, sick loathing coating every syllable. The crack of a bullet, the flash of light from the back of the small room, and Ben's startled cry all seemed to happen at once, sandwiched together in one surreal moment. Blood blossomed brightly on Ben's sleeve, and he sank to his knees, his face showing nothing but bewilderment.

"Ben, God, Ben—" Lee crouched, shielding Ben with his body, applying pressure to the wound, his back to the crowd.

Every instinct Ash had told him Lee wasn't safe. There was a wild scuffle going on at the back of the room; people were screaming, trying to get out of the way—or get a better angle with their cameras—but shots continued to fire, breaking the air into noise and echoes. Ash caught a glimpse of Stan, his face set and angry, one of the few people in the room trying to get closer to the gunman as he carved out a space around him with the gun, swinging it in a wide curve.

Their eyes met, and the man, tall and skinny, his eyes glittering in a chalk-pale face, smiled, mouthed two words, and aimed his gun.

Not at Ash. At Lee, oblivious, tending to Ben, whose blood was pumping out to soak his hand.

Two words. _Payback time._

Oh God, he knew who the gunman was.

Ash never remembered diving across the space separating him from Lee, his arms outstretched futilely, desperately, but he never forgot how it felt to be hit by a bullet, the force of the blow stunning him breathless, the heat of the burrowing metal and the stink of his torn, bleeding flesh.

He collapsed on top of Lee and Ben, the three of them sprawled out on the stage, Lee's breath light and warm against his face as the rest of him grew cold.

Then it was lights out, no encore, no curtain call. Only darkness.

_FADE IN_

  1. _EXT. ALLEY IN CITY_



_York can see two figures struggling on the rooftop, but as he looks around wildly for a way to get up there, one falls, spinning, flailing._

_It's Dolan. We cut to York's stricken face as Dolan falls to his death, close-up on his eyes._

_YORK [whispers, incredulous, stricken] Rob… [louder] Rob! Oh my God, Rob._

_York runs to Dolan's broken body, kneels, touches Rob’s face with his hand, cradling his cheek. The camera spins so that we're looking over York's shoulder at Dolan's lifeless face; then we pull back._

_FADE TO CREDITS_

_[Extract from the script of part one of the Season One finale episode of_ Hourglass _, “Wish on a Fallen Star.” Air date May 4, 1999]_

Chapter Eighteen

Lee couldn't stop pacing. His steps took him up and down the small waiting room. Every time he had to turn around was an irritant because he wanted to _run_ , feet pounding to match his heart, putting some distance between himself and the nightmare the day had become.

The hospital had given him a private room to allow him to shut out the press and because if he wasn't famous, Ben and Ash were. Sex and violence; this story had both now, and the reporters were lapping it up, literally chasing the ambulances that had whisked the injured people away.

Claudia and Stan sat next to each other, untouched coffees on the table in front of them. Ash's agent, Joe, had decided his place was outside the hospital, giving endless sound bites to the reporters. Lee had decided good old Joe was an asshole and didn't see that opinion changing in the near future.

"Lee." Claudia’s voice was an exhausted croak, its smooth richness lost in the hours of waiting and worrying. She'd been backstage when the shooting had begun, and the despair on her face when she'd run into the room looking for Stan had told its own story about the direction their long friendship had taken. Stan had walked up to her, the crowd parting for him, and enfolded her in a hug. He'd held her until she'd stopped shaking, his shirt, stained with Jones's blood and brains, dangling from his hand like a banner. The black T-shirt he'd been wearing under it probably hadn't escaped either, but Claudia hadn't seemed to care. Lee, pushed aside by the medical staff working on Ash and Ben, had watched them hug and felt numb, though he knew that he should be happy for them. With Ash on a stretcher a few yards away, happiness over anything was impossible. "Sit down, for God's sake."

"Can't," Lee said. "Why isn't anyone _telling_ us anything? _God._ "

His strength left him and he collapsed into the nearest chair, its unyielding surface as blank as the faces of the staff when he asked them questions.

"They will when they know something," Stan said with the patience of a parent dealing with a fractious child.

Lee knew he wasn't taking this well, but he couldn't find any calm center to retreat to, any small comfort to cling on to.

Well, maybe that the guy with the gun was dead, his final bullet shot into his own skull. That didn't help Ash or Ben, but it meant Seth Jones, a single white male aged forty-five, as the TV reports described him, the words running together, wouldn't ever be able to hurt them again.

Lee had watched the news reports on the small TV set high on the wall of the waiting room, the screams and chaos as distant as coverage from a war zone. He could see himself, crouched over Ben, and then he watched Ash's “incredible act of heroism,” as one reporter had gushingly described it.

"Why did he do it?" he said, the words bursting out of him.

"Jones?" Stan asked, frowning. "He’s another homophobic asshole—"

"No," Lee said impatiently, "not him. He's easy to figure out. He doesn't matter. Ash. Why did he— I don't get it."

"Would you have done it?" Claudia interrupted him to say. Lee noted absently that she was holding Stan's hand as if she wanted to be sure that he was there, warm, alive. "Would you have taken that bullet for him?"

Lee examined his hands, his fingers locked together. Strong hands, capable hands. So why were they shaking?

"You would," Stan said, his deep voice soothing when Lee didn't answer Claudia. "Ash didn't think about it. He saw you in danger and he reacted. You'd have done the same. You didn't run off that stage when the shooting started, did you? No, you went to help Ben. You didn't think about it; you did the right thing."

Lee dismissed that with a shake of his head. "It's not right that Ash is in there, dying, and I'm— I don't have a fucking scratch on me. Not a single fucking bruise, _nothing_."

Stan eased his hand free of Claudia's and came over to crouch beside Lee's chair. He put his hands on Lee's, anchoring him to the room, the moment. "Good. That's the way Ash wanted you to be. He's gonna need you fit and strong to help him when he's getting over this. And he's not dying, okay? No one's said that. You're hearing shit because you're terrified, but I've been listening. Ben's arm's broken, but it'll mend. Ash is—" Stan hesitated, as if he were searching for words that wouldn't push Lee down deeper into the bleak darkness. "He's hurting. That bullet tore him up, but he's breathing. He's alive."

The door opened and Ben came in, sitting in a wheelchair, pushed by a nurse. "He's under contract—he'd better not stop breathing."

Claudia stood and went over to embrace Ben, carefully avoiding his injured arm, set in plaster now. "Ben, you should be in bed, honey."

"That's where I'm heading," Ben told her. "I want painkillers, the good stuff, and Shelly here tells me I'll get them, isn't that right?"

His nurse smiled without agreeing and murmured, "Two minutes, Mr. Adler."

"Yeah, yeah." Ben looked tired, but his eyes were bright, snapping with febrile energy. Lee sensed Ben’s effort not to give in to the pain. "They said I was lucky. Didn't surprise me. Always have been. Tell them the damage, honey."

"The bullet grazed the bone, and there's a closed fracture," the nurse supplied. "Mr. Adler's lost some blood, and he needed stitches."

"Going to have a scar," Ben said offhandedly.

"How's Sam taking it?" Lee asked, rousing himself with an effort. Stan had stood when Ben came in, a silent presence beside him.

"She cried; then she wanted to sign my cast, but they said to wait until tomorrow." Ben shrugged, then winced. "Shit, that hurts. She's like her old man—tough. She needed to see I was okay." He gave Lee a direct look. "She’s broken up about Ash, though. Any news yet?"

Lee shook his head and went back to studying his hands.

"They said they'd have some news for us soon," Stan said.

"And that was two hours ago," Lee said tersely.

Shelly cleared her throat. "I'll make sure you get an update, but right now, Mr. Adler needs to rest."

Ben nodded. "You did good," he said to Lee. "I won't forget you sticking around and trying to help me." He glanced up at Stan. "You too. I wasn't in a position to see it for myself, but I've watched the footage and you were inches away before he put that bullet in his brain."

"Doing my job," Stan said.

Ben snorted. "Save the modest crap for the reporters, Stan. You, Lee, Ash… You stepped up, all of you." He sighed, long and gusty, and a smile blossomed on his face. "God, the publicity's going to be great. He was after revenge, you know. I told the cops all about it. Nothing to do with you being gay. At least, I can’t see why he’d care about that. Ash being happy, yeah. That’d chap his ass. He wanted Ash and me to suffer for ruining his career after he tried to give my baby drugs at a party once, years back. Last I heard, he bought coke from an undercover cop and got sent down. Spent years in jail plotting how to get back at us, I bet."

"I don’t care why he did it! Ash is dying and all you can think about is the goddamned _movie_?" Lee demanded, rising to his feet, his hands clenched into tight fists. Sometimes Ben was too much to take, and this was definitely one of those times. "You can take your fucking film and shove it. I—"

Ben looked alarmed, his gaze darting around the room. "Dying? What? No! Who told you that?"

Shelly patted Ben's shoulder. "You need to calm down," she said firmly. "All of you do. I’ll find out what I can about Mr. Morden's current condition and I'll be right back."

The door closed behind her and Lee found himself stranded in the middle of the room, no air left to breathe, Ben's face crumpled now, woeful, guilty.

"I didn't think it was that bad," Ben said after a moment. "Jesus, Lee, you know I love the guy. I'd never—"

"Save it," Lee said dully, not bothering to point out that Ben's affection for Ash—if it existed at all—was brand-new and shiny.

He sank onto his chair again and waited for Shelly to return, the minutes passing by slowly, seconds dragging, tired, chained to each other, weighted down.

When Shelly returned, it was with a doctor, a brisk woman, small and solid, her blonde hair showing streaks of gray.

"I'm Dr. Turner. I understand you're eager to know about Mr. Morden's condition," she said, her expression not unsympathetic but distant. "The bullet has been removed and the internal damage it caused has been repaired to the best of our ability. He's out of danger, but he's obviously been through considerable trauma. There's a high risk of infection in cases like this, and for a while we were concerned that there'd been some damage to the spinal column, but that turned out not to be the case. He's under sedation, and we'll keep him that way to give him the chance to recuperate, so you might as well all go home."

"I can't see him?" Lee asked, dizzy with relief that Ash was alive, but unable to fully accept the good news when it came mixed in with so much that sounded ominous. Dr. Turner had spoken so quickly that he wasn't sure he'd taken it all in.

"No one can see him until tomorrow," the doctor said with polite finality. "I appreciate that you're all anxious, but he's in ICU and that's restricted to immediate family."

Ben pointed at Lee with his good arm. "He _is_ family. Ash got hurt saving his life, they're that close."

Lee didn't need the reminder of why Ash was lying in a bed somewhere, the body Lee loved to touch scarred and torn.

He didn't turn on the charm. Something told him that it wouldn't work with a doctor who'd dealt with hundreds of emotionally volatile relatives. Instead he stood and walked over to her. "I don't need to go into the room and I won't get in the way. I need to see Ash before I go home. Please."

The flat despair in his eyes must have gotten through. She pursed her lips and nodded sharply. "You can look, but that's it. All of you not in wheelchairs—go home. If you want to help, donate some blood."

"We already did," Stan told her, showing off the Band-Aid in the crook of his elbow.

She smiled for the first time. "Excellent. Thank you."

Ben left with his nurse, whisked away with a brisk efficiency, and Lee turned to Stan and Claudia. "Wait here?"

"Of course," Claudia said. "For as long as you need us."

The doctor was already leaving so Lee didn't have time to hug Claudia, but he wanted to. He settled for a grateful smile and hurried to catch up with Dr. Turner before she disappeared into the anonymous hallways.

The ICU was quiet, a purposeful, watchful quiet. Lee stared through glass that appeared blurry because his eyes were wet with tears. Against the white pillow, Ash's blond hair seemed faded to gray and his face was slack, the drugs robbing it of animation.

Lee ignored the equipment pumping fluids into Ash and the machines monitoring him, concentrating fiercely on Ash's face, needing to see some sign that Ash was alive.

"He's a strong man. Healthy," Dr. Turner said quietly. "That will count in his favor."

"It should have been me," Lee choked out, the tears trickling down messily over his face. He rubbed his hands over his damp cheeks impatiently. "God, he was so brave."

"So I've heard." She patted his arm. "I can't make promises—it's too soon for that—but I think he'll make a good recovery. It'll take time, but there's always plenty of that, isn't there?"

Lee took one last look at Ash, then allowed himself to be gently but firmly drawn away from the window.

He'd always thought the premise of _Hourglass_ was unlikely, but not now. If he could have wished Ash back to health, he'd have done it, and paid for the wish with more than a single day of his life.

For Ash, he'd give up all of his days, every single one.

_FADE IN_

  1. _EXT. ALLEY IN CITY_



_YORK [whispers, incredulous, stricken] Rob… [louder] Rob! Oh my God, Rob._

_York runs to Dolan's broken body, kneels, touches his face with his hand, cradling his cheek. The camera spins so that we're looking over York's shoulder at Dolan's lifeless face; then we pull back._

_YORK [steely determination] No! Alura, I know you can hear me. I can't lose him. I won't. If I never make another wish, grant me this one. I wish Rob was alive, healthy, unhurt. I wish it. Save him, dammit, he didn't deserve this—_

_We see a swirl of gold around Dolan's body and we hear Alura's voice._

_ALURA This wish will come with a price. One you may find too high._

_YORK [shakes his head violently] No. Anything. I'll pay any price if you bring him back._

_ALURA I will permit you the power to do this, but hear me. There will be consequences—_

_YORK I said, I_ don't care _!_

_[Extract from the script of part two of the Season One finale episode of_ Hourglass _, “Wish on a Fallen Star.” Air date May 11, 1999]_

Chapter Nineteen

Ash woke to darkness. Pain and darkness. Needles sticking into him, piercing him, holding him down. He tried to fight free, images of displayed butterflies and Gulliver captured in Lilliput clashing and colliding in his brain. Words of protest rose in his throat as screams and emerged as a croak from bone-dry lips.

With difficulty, he opened his eyes, gummed closed, rusty with disuse, and let the moisture that welled up when the light dazzled them clear his vision.

Pale walls, a diffuse light, dimmer than he'd first thought, and a muted buzz against the quietness of night told him where he was as much as the pain helped to ground him. Hospitals were never wholly silent, never fell asleep.

He turned his head, an inch, no more, and saw Lee's hand, curled on his knee, a defenseless, childish curve, as if the emptiness his palm and fingers held needed to be filled by a treasured toy, a loved-soft blanket.

Ash concentrated on Lee's hand and then moved his head again, gaining another view, no wider than the first. Lee's chest, rising and falling as he slept in a chair beside Ash's bed, his breathing quiet, his body slumped in an awkward shape, a rag-doll thrown down.

More. Ash needed to see Lee's face. Hazy with whatever drugs were rushing around his body, dousing the flames that tried to lick hungrily at his flesh, he clung to that one imperative.

He tilted his head back, his cheek sliding over the cool, stiff pillowcase, the stubble on his chin rasping against it.

Lee. Oh God, Lee. Even in sleep, a frown creased Lee’s wide forehead and he looked grubby, tired, his clothing lived-in, his chin showing a crop of stubble, dark against Lee's tanned face. It didn't matter. Lee was alive, safe. Ash tried to reach out to him and winced at a sharp stab of pain in his hand when he jarred the IV needle.

Below the waist was a dull, distant pain, held at bay by the drugs, more ominous than agony would have been.

Lee was fine and Ash was in a hospital bed, which meant that the bullet aimed at Lee—that murderous, hate-filled little fuck Jones had tried to _shoot_ him, for God's sake, shoot his Lee—had hit a different target.

"I've been shot," he said aloud and heard it as clear words in his head and a garbled jumble in his ears.

Incoherent or not, it was enough to wake Lee, who jerked upright, his eyes blinking wildly, his mouth hanging open.

"Ash?"

Too loud, but Ash didn't mind. He nodded, keeping secret his inability to speak, and tried to smile.

"Oh, my God. Ash." Lee's face crumpled like a child's, tears leaking from his eyes and sliding unheeded down his cheeks. He reached out and took Ash's hand, a careful, gentle possession that didn't jolt Ash at all, speaking of practice.

How long had he lain here, for Lee to know so precisely how to touch him without setting off a ripple of discomfort through a pain-racked body?

Ash tried to tighten his fingers around Lee's and was rewarded by a response from his muscles, though his grip was weak, hesitant.

"You're in the hospital, but I guess you've figured that out," Lee said, his voice gentle now, his words spaced and measured. "I'm fine, Ben's fine—well, his arm's broken, but he's already back at work. You saved me. Both of us."

Ash absorbed that as Lee fell silent, taking the scraps of information and processing them, filling in some of the blank emptiness between the _now_ of this room and the _then_ of the press conference.

"Seth Jones—he's dead, he's gone. Shot himself. Don't worry about him."

The fierce stab of pleasure Ash felt shocked him, but part of him refused to let go of that primal sense of justice being served. He wasn't a bloodthirsty man, but that asshole had hurt Ben and tried to kill Lee to get back at the people he held responsible for ruining his career. Ash couldn't find any mercy for him.

Lee had told him everything now—with one glaring exception. Ash forced his mouth and brain to realign. He hadn't been shot in the fucking head, for God's sake. This disconnect was down to the drugs coursing through his veins, and he could cut through the haze to say one lousy word.

"Me?"

"You? You're going to be okay," Lee said firmly. "You've been out of it for a day or two, but you're awake now, which is—God, it's so good. You know you got shot, right?"

Ash nodded, remembering it. "Hurt."

"Yeah, it tore you up inside a bit," Lee said, his voice wincing, though his expression stayed calm. "Nothing vital, I swear. You lost a lot of blood, but they filled you up with some nice fresh stuff. You've got to rest and get better. And you will."

Ash couldn't find the energy to nod again. Lee was saying something about getting a doctor, but Ash was slipping back to the blankness, the empty space, and trying not to let go of Lee's hand because he didn't want to lose him ever again.

_In the chaos following the shot that wounded well-known producer/director Ben Adler, three men emerged as heroes._

_Stan Baylor, bodyguard and friend of Lee Stevens, fought his way, not to the doors, as so many were doing, but toward the gunman, intent on disarming him._

_Lee Simons, who could have reached safety by simply walking off the stage, chose instead to go immediately to the aid of his former mentor, Adler, his actions in applying pressure to Adler's wound deemed vital by the emergency staff who arrived minutes later._

_And Ash Morden, who, moments earlier, had electrified the crowd of reporters by confirming that he and Lee Stevens had reunited offscreen as well as on the set of the movie, selflessly put his body in front of a bullet aimed directly at his lover, undoubtedly saving Lee's life._

_Three men. Three heroes. Will this reporter be watching_ Hourglass _when it's released later this year? You bet._

_I want to see if Morden can save the movie too._

_[Extract from an article in the Entertainment section of_ Los Angeles Chronicle _]_

Chapter Twenty

"I'm so fucking bored," Ash said.

Lee tossed the magazine he'd been reading while Ash dozed onto the hospital bed, a bright splash of color against the crisp white sheets. "That's a good sign," he said cautiously. Ash's mood was unpredictable. He could go from craving sympathy and being babied to rejecting the most necessary assistance and choosing independence over common sense.

"In what way is it good that I want to keep my eyes closed because if I look at the painting on the wall over there again, I'm gonna scream?"

"Which painting?" Lee said, walking over to the wall opposite Ash's bed. "This one? This one that I'm taking down as I speak, or I would if it weren't screwed to the fucking wall. Ow. I broke my goddamned nail."

He sucked his finger and gave Ash a stern look, hiding his relief that Ash's sulky scowl had become a grin. "That's right, mock me."

"Would you have taken it down?"

"In a heartbeat." Lee returned to Ash's side and bent over to kiss him, searching for the familiar taste under the antiseptic tang that seeped into everything from the coffee to the sheets. "You want it, you get it, babe."

"Yeah? So where's my blow job?"

"Waiting for you as soon as the doctor says you're allowed to have them, like a beer and a pizza."

"Don't," Ash said. "I'd fucking kill for either of those."

"But not a blow job? I'm hurt."

"For your mouth on me, I'd—" Ash faltered, whatever riposte he'd been about to say left unspoken, as if this were something he couldn't joke about. "I miss you."

"I'm here as much as they'll let me," Lee protested. He'd stopped sleeping by Ash's side—the chair was hellishly uncomfortable, and after the first few nights, Ash was recovering enough to make it unnecessary—but he spent most of the day with Ash.

"Yes, but I can't—" Ash waved his hands around, sketching out his frustration. "I can't _touch_ you," he finished.

Lee knew what he meant. They could sit holding hands, and they could kiss, light, brief kisses, but the room had large glass windows opening onto the hallway and everyone who walked by seemed to look in. Ash wasn't up for anything more than kisses, no matter how much he pretended to be straining at the leash to get his hands on Lee, anyway, but more than the inability to get close physically, they were suffering from the lack of privacy. They had plenty to talk about, but this wasn't the place.

A nurse bringing in a bedpan as Lee shared his certainty Ash would die in a broken voice had proven that point beyond all reasonable doubt.

"You can go home soon." Lee was counting the hours. "Tuesday today, and they said, what, maybe Thursday morning?"

Ash nodded. "Maybe tomorrow."

Lee didn't share Ash's optimism about an early release, but he settled for a noncommittal smile.

"No, they did," Ash said, reading Lee's expression. "When the doctor looked at my back this morning she said the stitches could come out tomorrow, and if I could walk the length of the hallway—and I can, I've been practicing—she'd discharge me."

"Yeah?" Lee's smile was unforced and genuine now. "God, Ash, why didn't you tell me? I'm going to call Conchita and tell her to get that welcome-home banner hanging up."

"Not literally, I hope," Ash said. "And no balloons either. I want peace, quiet, and you."

"You got it," Lee said. "All of it."

He'd been spending his nights at Ash's, partly because it was closer to the hospital, mostly because he could sleep in Ash's bed and pretend, when he woke in the night alone, that Ash was in the bathroom taking a leak, or in the kitchen drinking juice straight from the carton because Conchita wasn't around to give him hell for it.

He couldn't fool himself for long, not even when he had his face buried in Ash's pillow, breathing in the faint scent of Ash's hair.

Ash wouldn’t find it all that quiet at home, though. Every time Lee visited Ash, he'd seen a few cars in the street containing reporters waiting patiently for a scoop. Not many—no point with Ash still in the hospital—but a few. The hospital had its own gauntlet to run. Once Ash returned home, the reporters would become more persistent. The public wanted their personal take on events. Lee hadn't said anything to them, and Ben was keeping uncharacteristically silent, both of them waiting for Ash to be well enough to give an interview.

Lee had expected the lack of input from them to have killed the story, but it'd done the opposite. They weren't front-page news—Angelina Jolie had adopted another baby and the public's attention span was short—but they weren't under the radar, either.

"What were you reading?" Ash asked with slightly overdone casualness. He picked up the magazine Lee had tossed down and studied it. "Anything in here about us?"

Lee rolled his eyes. "Ash, it's last year's Halloween issue. See the pumpkins on the cover? I grabbed it from a table in the cafeteria for something to read."

"Oh." Ash had the grace to look shamefaced, but when Lee snickered, he rallied. "Like you haven't been reading the pieces about us too."

Lee cleared his throat, uneasily aware that he'd been pouncing on every one. "Maybe. Some of them. It's fun counting up how many mistakes they can fit into a few paragraphs. I don't think any of them have gotten your age right."

"That's because I don't want them to know it." He frowned. "Wait—they're not saying I'm older, are they?"

"Older than your fake age or your real one?"

"Either!"

"Relax," Lee said. "Everyone knows forty's the new thirty."

"Bastard," Ash said and threw the magazine at Lee without a single wince. Oh yeah, he was on the mend.

"Seriously, though, don't get too attached to the publicity," Lee warned. "It won't last until the movie comes out, so it's not like it's much use to you."

"Ben will make sure it is," Ash said with conviction. "Sure, people will forget inside of a week, but he'll find a way to remind them come the release date."

"How do you feel about that?" Lee asked, vaguely disturbed by the idea of milking the event. The man who'd died had been a nutcase and a vicious one, but still, he'd died, and he could've taken dozens of people with him. After his release from jail, Jones had spoken to a few friends about his plans to get back at Adler and Ash. Piecing the conversations together, they realized the weird phone calls had been an inept attempt to get them panicked and on edge, and the press conference had provided the perfect opportunity to inflict the most suffering. Ben would die, Ash would lose his lover, and Jones had planned a final shot to leave Ash crippled or scarred. He’d expected to walk out of the room unscathed. His friends had dismissed his ramblings as pure fantasy.

"I don't—I don't want to use this for some cheap publicity, Ash. It's why I haven't spoken to any of the reporters camped outside your place and Stan's."

Ash shrugged. "You've been out of the game too long, babe. They’ll spin this a dozen different ways that don’t come close to the truth of why he hated me. Crazed fan takes out idol's lover, maybe. That's a publicity guy's idea of heaven."

Lee had opened his mouth to refute that point of view with as much vehemence as he thought Ash could take when he saw the lines of tension around Ash's mouth. "Ash?"

Ash had been dozing in a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He got off the bed and headed for the door. "I'm going to take a walk. Stretch my legs."

Lee got between Ash and the door. "The hell you are."

Ash's lips twitched in a half-smile. "Or what? You punch me? Throw me to the bed? You know you won't. You're still treating me like I'm going to break if you breathe too hard on me."

"If you don't tell me what's going on in your head, _share_ with me instead of pulling the cold-hearted crap I'd buy from your fucking agent but never from you, I'll take a walk of my own," Lee said. "Right back home, _my_ home, and you can have all the peace and quiet you like."

"That threat won't work now I know where you live," Ash said with an edge to his voice. "And you'd better believe that I'd come after you, because I would, if only to punch you the way you did me."

"If you'd wanted to find me before, you could've managed it," Lee said, finally saying something that he'd been allowing to fester for far too long. "I lived a few hours away, in the same fucking state, Ash, not another planet. If you'd wanted to see me, I wasn't that hard to find."

Ash met his gaze, but Lee could see how much it took out of him to do that. "You think I forgot you. That I didn't care. Not true. I didn't look deeper, I didn't keep looking, because I figured that you didn't want me to find you. If I'd known it was a test—"

"It wasn't! I didn't expect—" Lee took a deep breath. Ash was pale, sweat beading his forehead. "Look, sit down, okay? You look like shit."

Ash had to have been feeling as crappy as he looked, because he walked over to his bed and sat heavily. "Don't go," he said, his voice low enough that Lee had to strain to hear him, his head hanging down, his brief burst of energy exacting a cost. "Lee, please—"

Lee went over to him and fell to his knees so he could look up into Ash's face. He took Ash's hands in his and squeezed them gently. "I don't think I could walk away from you again, any more than I could help coming back when Ben gave me the chance. I love you. Always have, always will. It doesn't mean that I'm going to let you get away with shutting me out, though. So forget me talking out of my ass about walking away and let me threaten you with something that you'll believe, because you'd have to be brain-dead to think I could turn my back on you."

Ash took a deep, shuddering breath. "God, I'm such a fucking baby these days," he said. "Sorry."

"You're entitled," Lee said. "When you're better, totally, one hundred percent yourself again, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown or three. I'm holding on by a thread here being brave and reasonable when I want to lose it because you got hurt and I nearly lost you." He reached up to stroke Ash's hair, the soft, unruly strands clinging to his fingers. "Do me a favor?"

"Anything," Ash said, sounding startled but pleased.

"Baby _me_ a bit?" Lee begged, resting his head against Ash's knees and closing his eyes, his hands curved around Ash's thighs, holding on. He genuinely wanted this, but he also wanted to cede some control to Ash, who had to be chafing at his helplessness.

Ash breathed in sharply; then Lee felt Ash's fingers brush over his hair, a light, reassuring caress. "I've got you," Ash said, his voice deeper, resonant. "You don't need to worry about me and you don't need to pretend you're feeling fine when you're not. I can take you at your worst, the same way you do with me."

"For better or worse…" Lee said.

"If I could marry you, I would, sweetheart," Ash told him. "You and me, all the way."

"Yeah," Lee said on a whisper, and closed his eyes when Ash's fingers found all the right places to rub on his neck and shoulders, working out his worries. "Still want to know what's on your mind."

Ash sighed, half resignation, half surrender, and stopped the massage. "I was so certain that was the end of everything for me. I'd come out, tell the world I was gay—"

"And spoken for."

"Totally," Ash agreed, a smile warming his voice. "And I was terrified, but looking forward to it all being over. No more lying, no more secrets. Bring it on, you know?"

"Sure," Lee said, moving his head a little to get more comfortable and wishing he could press a kiss against Ash's thigh. Prudence kept him from acting on his impulse. The last thing he wanted was for someone passing to draw the wrong conclusion about what he was doing on his knees with his head in Ash's lap. Reluctantly, he drew back, smiled up at Ash, and got to his feet, joining Ash on the bed. He slid his arm carefully around Ash's shoulders and gave an encouraging murmur.

"Then that guy started shooting up the place and the focus was on him," Ash said slowly. "God, that sounds like I think he grabbed the limelight, but it's not that. All those articles aren't about us or me coming out. They're about—"

"You being a hero," Lee said.

"But for all the wrong reasons," Ash said.

Lee shrugged. "Not from where I'm sitting. Coming out wasn't something you chose. It was forced on you by that photograph. Ben could've bluffed you out of it, but the rumors wouldn't have gone away. Saving me—that was something you did deliberately."

"No. It was instinctive."

"I don't think many heroes sit down and think over the pros and cons of what they need to do," Lee said, painfully aware of how easy it would be to say the wrong thing. Ash's take on things was a little hard to wrap his head around. "They go ahead and do it. If you don't think what you did was anything much, well, you're on your own there, buddy."

"Seems that way," Ash agreed. "Joe says he's got three or four roles lined up for me when I'm fit again. Pilots, so probably nothing will come of them, but still…"

"Gay. It's the new black," Lee said drily, rewarded by a chuckle from Ash that sounded unforced.

"So we go back to my place for a bit, but after that, when I can handle the drive, I still want to go and see your house, the way we planned."

Lee bit his lip. "That was fine before, but it's not ready. It's empty, dusty rooms, a total mess."

"I won't go until I'm able to be some use," Ash told him. "A couple of weeks, maybe. By then, I'll be fine. I want to help you fix it up, sweetheart."

"Let's see how it goes," Lee said. "First we get you out of here. You rest and I'll go back to your place and make sure everything's ready for you to come home tomorrow or the day after."

"Tomorrow," Ash insisted, his eyes fluttering closed as he lay down on his side.

Lee bent to kiss Ash's forehead, relieved that it was cool, not fever-dry as it had been a week ago. "Tomorrow," he said. "Definitely."

_FADE IN_

  1. _EXT. ALLEY IN CITY_



_DOLAN Steve? What happened— No, wait, I fell. God, I fell off the_ building _. [He glances up at York] Why am I lying in your lap? More importantly, why am I not dead? I_ fell _._

_YORK [shrugs, a broad smile on his face] What can I say? Helps if you have friends with, uh, “freaky ink and delusions of being Gandalf.”_

_DOLAN I should never have said that to you. Gandalf's way cooler._

_[Extract from the script of part two of the Season One finale episode of_ Hourglass _, “Wish on a Fallen Star.” Air date May 11, 1999]_

Chapter Twenty-One

Ben walked out to within a yard of Morden's pool and watched its owner do a length. Not bad. Morden was maybe a shade slower than he'd been back in the spring, but he was moving well and cleaving through the water with an impressive lack of splashing.

Nice to see the guy had made a full recovery, though the scar running across his back told its own story. There wouldn't be many topless scenes in Ash's future with that ragged red slash spoiling what had been a prime piece of meat. Ben quelled the impulse to rub his arm and sent a silent, vicious 'fuck you' toward Jones in whatever hell he was rotting in. Asshole.

Maybe Ash could get some cover-up work done. Or they could use a double for his back. God knows they did it for asses and tits often enough.

"What do you want?" Morden called without turning his head to look at Ben, which hurt. He'd visited. Twice. The first time Morden had been asleep, with Lee standing guard over his bed and daring Ben to breathe too heavily and wake his honeybun, and the second time—okay, maybe there had only been one time. Ben had been rushed off his fucking ass trying to finish producing and editing a movie with his two stars both AWOL. Simons could've come in, but no, he was surgically attached to Morden or something and refused, like going more than a few feet away would make Morden suffer a relapse.

"Checking up on my lead actor."

"The movie's over, Ben. You can stop being nice to me now."

Morden stopped swimming and climbed out, cool water dripping off his body—still a good body—and splashing on the wooden flooring, darkening it.

Ben could remember the blood on the stage doing that too, but it wasn't in his nature to dwell. People, including his ex-wife Maddy, had suggested therapy, but he'd waved them off impatiently. No time. He'd had a nice private meltdown one night, getting hammered and screaming, then sobbing, though it'd gotten a little fuzzy around then. He'd worked out all his hate and fear against a world where men with guns could come that close to taking his life away from him before he was anything like done with it, and woken with a hangover and a measure of peace.

He figured the bottle of scotch and the trashed room had saved him a few thousand compared to the bill a therapist would've handed him, and he'd never liked that couch anyway.

"I told you. All's forgiven. Forgotten, no, because I never forget, but I took a bullet for you and that means you owe me to infinity and beyond."

"I think that's trademarked," Morden pointed out and patted his stomach dry with a fluffy white towel as if that was the punch line to a joke Ben hadn't gotten. "And for all you know, he was aiming at you. Maybe he hated moviemakers more than gays."

Actors. Ben gave Morden a perfunctory smile, privately enjoying the verbal needling. People had been walking around him with anxious smiles, no one talking back to him, no one arguing. Which was how things usually were, but it felt different. Hell, even Maddy was being kind to him, which was disconcerting enough to make Ben wonder, in odd moments of introspection, if he'd died on that stage and this was hell.

"Never mind him," he said. "Sit. Talk."

"Roll over. Play dead," Morden mocked him. "If we're going to talk, I need a drink. How about you?"

Ben hesitated. Dramatically cathartic binges aside, he'd been trying to cut back out of some vague idea of propitiating whatever gods had kept him safe. Eating and drinking sensibly and exercising in an increasingly halfhearted way would soon become too boring to endure, but he was still more or less committed to a healthy lifestyle. There was also the small matter of it being a few minutes shy of eleven in the morning.

Ice clinked in a glass and his resolve crumbled. "Make mine a double."

"So," Morden said evenly, once they'd settled down on lounge chairs with the sun thwarted by the large umbrellas scattered around the patio. "Talk to me, Ben."

"Where's Lee?" Ben hadn't meant to say that, but he'd nailed it. Bull’s-eye. Whatever was bugging Morden, Lee's absence was at the root of it. Ben had come to see Morden—Ash—because Ash wasn't returning his calls and was refusing to be tied down to anything in the way of promoting the movie. He'd arrived knowing he couldn't bully Ash into being obedient, but that was okay. Ben had other weapons in his arsenal. If Ash was saying no—and he was—there had to be a reason. Find the reason, fix the problem, and Ash would say yes instead.

Simple, straightforward, and because they weren't words associated with Ben, no one would be expecting that approach. Kind of sneaky, which _was_ a word Ben was used to hearing.

He basked in the warmth of achieving step one within minutes of his arrival and took a sip of his scotch as a reward while he waited for Ash to answer him.

"Lee?" Ash gave a short, bitter laugh. "How the hell should I know? He's never here. I can make a pretty good guess, though."

"Yeah?" Ben kept his voice interested but calm. Inside he was rolling his eyes. He'd _known_ this would happen. They'd broken up. Already. Didn't have the decency to wait until after the DVD release, oh no. Fuck them both. "I like guesses." Total lie. He hated them.

"He's at his house," Ash said, enunciating each word through gritted teeth. "Or at the hardware store in that crappy little town of his. Or matching paint chips. Or finding the perfect dresser for the spare bedroom in an antique store. Or—"

"Enough," Ben said. "He's working on his house, I get it. I've been there, remember? I know it needs work."

"You've been there?" Ash said and laughed again. Ben let him get away with it, but if Ash tried to make it three bitter chuckles in a row, he planned to take steps to choke him off so all that emerged was a strangled gurgle. "Lucky you. I haven't. I might stub my toe on a loose board or get tetanus off a rusty nail."

"Morden, I'm a busy man," Ben said. "In case you haven't noticed, my arm's still in a cast and I'm paying someone to drive me around, which bugs the hell out of me as much as people being melodramatic when I haven't told them to pump up the volume. As your director—as your buddy—I'm telling you to spit it out and let Uncle Ben fix it so we can all go back to work, because in case this has escaped your notice too, I have a goddamn movie coming out soon with your name on it, and you're fucking invisible when I need you both out there."

By the end he was yelling, and by God it felt good. He downed his drink in a long swallow, exhilaration swirling through him, and fixed Morden with a hard stare. "Tell me. Short sentences, no tears."

Ash compressed his lips until they formed a thin, pale line, then nodded sharply. In Ben's experience, an actor with no lines to say meandered and used “uh” more times than was humanly possible, but to give Morden his due, he didn't do badly.

"The day of the shooting, we were heading off to that place. Lee's house."

"Yeah, I know," Ben said, smothering a yawn. "You were going to get sawdust in your hair and sleep on the floor. Wished I could've tagged along. Sounded fun."

"So when they said I could leave the hospital, I told Lee I wanted to do it. Go there." Ash's blue eyes took on a brooding look. "I could tell he didn't like the idea. He pretended that he did, but I can always tell when he's holding out on me…"

"Stay focused, kid."

"He wants me to have everything I ask for," Ash explained. "I say I'm thirsty and there's a glass of water in my hand ten seconds later. Drives me fucking crazy."

"You too?" Ben said. "Maddy keeps bringing me food. A month ago, she was telling me I needed to watch what I ate because I was getting fat." They shared a moment, silently contemplating how annoying people who cared could be; then Ben cleared his throat. "So why isn't he giving you this and taking you up there for some nice fresh air?"

"Because it's too fucking dangerous, apparently, the same way sex isn't happening unless it's me and my right hand." The gritted teeth were back. Considering how much Ash had probably paid for those white, straight teeth, Ben thought he should lay off on the jaw-clenching—and the over-sharing of personal information—but he didn't point that out. Not when Ash was finally getting to the point. "I'm _better_ , okay? Fully fit. I could climb ladders, paint walls, haul furniture around, sleep on a goddamn mattress on the floor without suffering a relapse, _and_ get my ass nailed, but do you think he'll accept that?"

"Going to take a wild guess and say no? And, Jesus, stop telling me about your sex life."

Ash was prowling around restlessly now, talking more to himself than Ben. "I said I wanted to see it, so he's fixing it up as fast as he can. Spending all the money from the movie— _wasting_ it—on paying an army of people to do the work he was looking forward to doing himself. He planned to get some help, sure, but not for everything. It's all ruined now and it's my fault."

Ash's energy left him between one bitter word and the next. Ben watched him sink heavily onto a lounger and felt a tiny pang of sympathy.

"I always spoil things for him," Ash muttered. "Always."

Enough was enough. Ben downed his drink. "So stop whining and get up there. It's a free country, right? Turn up wearing tight jeans and a tool belt, he'll kick the competition off his property, and you two can play at hunky carpenters for a few days. Problem sorted." He contemplated his empty glass with a distant amazement at himself. Matchmaking for actors. How low could he go? He'd be sending them a housewarming gift next.

"Go up there?" Ash sounded doubtful, but there was a calculating gleam in his eyes as if he was already picking the perfect outfit to seduce Lee or show him what he'd been missing. "I suppose I could. Yeah… Show him I'm fine. _Make_ him see it."

"I know you could," Ben said, channeling the serpent in Eden without any difficulty at all. "But don't believe the GPS when it tells you how long it's gonna take to get there. Those goddamn country roads add another twenty minutes, easy."

"Mr. Morden?" Conchita, Morden's housekeeper, walked over to them, a phone in her hand. "It's Mr. Simons. He says he's going to stay over tonight after all because he's waiting to sign for a delivery rescheduled for this afternoon. He wanted to talk to you and make sure you weren't doing too much."

Ben watched Ash's face darken with a flush of pure annoyance, but Ash was enough of a professional to hold it together on the phone, murmuring reassuringly to the absent Lee and meekly agreeing to have an early night.

When the call ended, Ash breathed in sharply, his mouth a tight, thin line, then spun on his heel and hurled the phone at the closest wall. It shattered with a satisfactory amount of noise and fell in two pieces to the ground. It was the first time Ben had seen Ash lose it, and he had to admit the guy could pull it off without looking like a diva. Ash looked dangerous, his blond hair still water-dark, his blue eyes bright with anger.

"I'm going to pack," he said without looking at Ben. "Conchita, we'll need a new phone."

He walked away, moving with a feral energy that screamed “predator,” not “convalescing patient.” Ben scratched at his cast, cursing the ever-present itch, and wondered how many speeding tickets Morden would pick up on the way.

_FADE IN_

  1. _INT. DUSK. YORK'S PENTHOUSE_



_York and Dolan are sitting on a couch, each drinking beer, outwardly relaxed though their tension is evident._

_DOLAN So I guess they won't be able to charge Fallon with murder seeing as I'm alive and kicking._

_YORK They're charging him with multiple counts of fraud and attempted murder. It's not enough, but it'll have to do._

_DOLAN I can't believe the police bought the story about me landing on a fire escape. There wasn't one on the side of the building he pushed me off._

_YORK Yeah, I changed a few details. Don't worry. Fallon's not going to argue. In fact, he's had a nervous breakdown, not that it's going to save him from prison._

_DOLAN I've never heard you sound so vindictive._

_YORK [places his beer bottle on the table] I get that way when people try to kill my friends. It's a character flaw. Should I send him a get-well-soon card?_

_DOLAN Very funny. Want another beer before I hit the sack? Celebrate the whole not being dead thing?_

_YORK [gets up, turns away] Sure._

_DOLAN And, Steve? I didn't say thanks yet, but you know, don't you? You know how I feel about what you did._

_[Pause]_

_YORK I didn't do anything that I don't do every day, kid. We're good. How about some pretzels with that beer?_

_Dolan can't see York’s haunted expression as he walks away, but the audience can._

_[Extract from the script of part two of the Season One finale episode of_ Hourglass _, “Wish on a Fallen Star.” Air date May 11, 1999]_

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ash didn't own a plaid shirt, but he had a denim one so threadbare and soft that it screamed _rip me off_. He paired it with jeans tight enough to be enticing but not so tight he couldn't move in them. He was as serious about helping with the renovations as he was about getting laid. This house was important to Lee, which meant it was high on Ash's priority list too. He wanted to be able to look at a wall and remember painting it, run his hand over a piece of wood and know he'd sanded it clear of splinters.

He wanted to walk into Lee's house and not feel like a visitor, and that was something to earn with sweat and aching muscles.

Ash threw a hastily but efficiently packed case in the back of his car and set off. It was after noon and he was in the mood to drive fast, the road an adversary to fight, a partner to dance with. His car was a low scream of red, and every highway cop out there would want to pull him over, but Ash's eyesight was good and his instincts for a lurking patrol car even better. He decided to take it easy until he was well clear of the city and then take advantage of every open stretch of road. It usually took Lee's beat-up truck two hours and twenty minutes, door to door. Ash planned to shave that down to less than two hours. If he couldn't, he'd buy them a fucking helicopter and see if that could cut the commute time down to something reasonable.

Ash was tired of compromises not being on the menu. So Lee wanted to live way out in the sticks while Ash wanted a career and needed to stay visible, but they wanted each other more? Fine. They'd make it work. They weren't lovesick kids needing to spend every moment together, but Lee's frequent—infuriating—absences had shown Ash how necessary Lee was to him. He had Sting wailing plaintively in his head on a loop about beds being too big without the one you love, and irritating though the earworm was, Ash agreed with the sentiment.

Lee settled to sleep curled up on himself as tightly as a cat, but whenever Ash woke in the night, Lee had moved, sprawling out, his hand on Ash or his leg flung over Ash's, anchoring him. If Ash tried to work his way free, needing to piss or cool off, Lee would protest in a sleep-drugged grumble, blindly groping for Ash's hand.

That was when Lee's insistence that anything but the tamest sex was too much of an exertion for a man recovering from a bullet wound became a pain in the ass. Before the shooting, Ash had gotten used to returning from the bathroom to find Lee awake enough to be half-hard and ready to be coaxed into a fuck in the dark, their bodies still primed from sex before they'd turned out the lights. Ash sometimes found it difficult to switch off the part of him that was concerned with good angles and finding the light, even during sex, as if there was a camera always around, silently recording his life. In the dark, he could relax, not care if pleasure made him screw up his face or groan out filthy-sweet endearments and exhortations to Lee. He didn't like losing the sight of Lee, his face flushed, his eyes intent, but he loved the freedom the darkness provided.

Since the shooting, when Lee was in bed with him, Ash was conscious of Lee's efforts to leave space between them after a brief hug and kiss that left Ash hungry for more. If he'd had to listen to Lee jerking off in the shower before bed, it was impossible to fall asleep.

"I _want_ to fuck you through the mattress, babe," Lee had said when Ash had spread himself out on the bed one night, naked, rock hard, blatantly begging for Lee's dick in him. "I'm scared of hurting you. I could maybe blow you, if we take it slow?"

Ash loved Lee's mouth but not when it was soft and gentle, driving him insane and not in a good way.

"Thanks," he'd said shortly, rolling over, his face hot with embarrassment and frustration. "I'll pass."

"Ash—"

"Go to sleep."

As he approached the town closest to Lee's house, Ash slowed, curiosity filling him. So this was it. He'd grown up somewhere similar, maybe twice the size but with the same air of community and friendliness. His hometown hadn't been free of problems with drugs and violence—nowhere with people was—but it'd been a good place to live. This town, the streets bright with planters filled with flowers, litter and graffiti the exception, not the rule, felt familiar.

He stopped at a coffee shop called Sally's and picked up a dozen doughnuts. Lee had once brought some home in a box with the shop's logo on it and mentioned that he bought his workers lunch from there. With a vague memory of watching cop shows where doughnuts bought a visitor a good reception, he chose a selection from the display and paid for them with his baseball cap shading his face. Recognition wasn't something he wanted here.

Lee's house was a mile or so outside the town, easy enough to find, but at the end of some increasingly narrow roads leading nowhere much. Ash doubted many people would drive by it unless they were lost. He approved of the peace and the privacy. The house lay at the end of a driveway, curved so that trees hid the house from the road. The driveway had a few trucks in it—a plumber and a guttering firm by the looks of it. Ash parked his car in the shade of a tree, out of sight of the house, and got out.

The air was sultry, thick with the heat of late summer, buzzing with the drone of a thousand insects in the woods. Ash's fair skin burned easily, but bugs rarely bit him, something he'd had cause to be grateful for on many shoots. He left his overnight bag in the car and walked up the driveway, the box of doughnuts weighing heavy in his hands as nerves slowed his steps.

Shit, this was such a bad idea. Lee would be caught off-guard, maybe not pleased to see him. He'd be in the way, a distraction, an embarrassment. Ash rounded the curve with reluctance and saw the house for the first time.

Lee had described it, but Ash hadn't been able to build a picture in his mind and Lee had never gotten around to sharing the photographs he'd taken to chart the renovation's progress. It was so different from anything that Ash had driven past on his trip that it left him gaping, enchanted by the exuberant design and the old-fashioned charm it embodied. He wanted to explore it, go in every room, stand on every balcony, and discover the view from the cupola at every hour of the day and night. He could see there was still a load of work to do, and he couldn't wait to get involved in it. It wasn't only the house that appealed; the grounds were a mess, but their potential was there. No pool, it wouldn't fit here, but Ash could smell the ocean, and maybe they could add a hot tub, tucked away discreetly, enclosed by a vine-hung fence…

"Can I help you, buddy?"

Ash blinked, jarred out of his warm fog of appreciation for Lee's house. A burly man, beer gut straining at his belt, sandy hair going thin on top, was walking toward him, a large hammer swinging in a large fist. He didn't look hostile, but he wasn't giving out welcoming vibes either.

"Uh, hi. I'm a friend of Lee's, and he told me to drop by anytime and see how he was getting on with the house, maybe lend a hand." It wasn't a total lie. Ash held up the doughnuts, feeling like a man trying to placate a snarling guard dog with a steak. "I brought these for everyone."

The man snorted and patted his belly with the hand not holding the hammer. "Like I need any more calories, but thanks. Lee's out back somewhere, I think. Want me to take those for you?"

"Sure," Ash said, taken aback by the flip from wariness to welcome. He passed the box over, smiling when the man immediately flipped the lid to study the contents. "So how's it going? Lee seemed to think it'd be finished by winter?"

"God, you brought the raspberry chocolate ones," the man said with a groan. "I love them but they're Lee's favorites and he'll kill me if I eat them."

"I know," Ash said. "I got three, though. I don't think he'd mind if you had one of them. I'm Ash, by the way."

"Rick," the man said around a mouthful, the raspberry filling oozing out of what remained of the doughnut after his first bite. "And Lee's talking out of his ass, but yeah, it's going okay, I guess. Faster now he's not doing it solo."

Ash nodded, moving off the driveway and onto the grass surrounding the house. "Round the back, you said?"

Rick nodded back, then frowned. "What the hell?"

Ash turned, hearing what Rick had, the low rumble of an approaching vehicle. "What is it?"

Rick dropped his half-eaten doughnut back into the box and shoved the box back into Ash's hands. "First they say they're coming at eight, so we're all here waiting, then they call and say, no, sorry, won't be until five, so we all start jobs, and now they show up three hours early and the hallway's full of scaffolding and wet walls. Jesus, Lee's gonna blow a fucking fuse. 'Scuse me. Gotta go break the good news to him."

Ash watched Rick walk away, moving fast for a big man. He followed him before changing his mind. This was the perfect opportunity to look around while a preoccupied Lee dealt with the delivery truck that had pulled up outside the house. It was from Marten's Storage, which meant it was probably some of the furniture Lee had inherited and moved out of the house to keep it from being damaged during the renovations. If the house was ready for furniture, Ash didn't see why it was impossible for him to be there.

He walked around the house, going right where Rick had gone left, and found a side door leading into a short hallway with a narrow stairway leading up. There was a door at the end of the hallway, but Ash could hear voices from behind it so he walked up the stairs instead, still holding the doughnuts. They'd worked once, after all.

The house was a work in progress, room after room empty of furniture, the floors covered with dustsheets or grimy with the prints of dozens of work boots. Some rooms smelled of paint, others of warm, stale air. Ash began to see why Lee hadn't wanted him here—and to wonder how in God's name Lee had stood it for months on end. There were squatters in derelict buildings who lived better.

A single room held a mattress on the floor and a chest of drawers. It was reasonably clean, and Ash guessed it was Lee's temporary bedroom. It was an improvement on the rest of the place, but not by much. The thought of sharing the mattress with Lee was enough to make Ash feel he could overlook the décor. What was that poem about a jug of wine and something else being paradise enough if you were with your loved one? Ash couldn't remember the exact quotation, but he was totally on board with the sentiment—and the need for alcohol to improve the mood. It seemed like a good place to leave the doughnuts, and he placed them on top of a cardboard box holding, if the scribbled words on the side were to be trusted, Lee's winter clothes.

Still in love with the house, because even bare and grubby, he appreciated the high ceilings and original doors and flooring, Ash walked to the end of the hallway and the final doorway, which for some reason was reached by a short, wide flight of stairs, setting it apart.

This door, unlike the others, was closed firmly, giving off a definite do- not- enter vibe. Not in a creepy way, but a polite, this- is- private” way. Ash stood in front of it and hesitated, but in the end his need to know what lay behind the door was too consuming. He opened the door and walked in. He knew Lee physically as well as anyone could or ever would, but there were so many blank spaces in his knowledge of Lee as a whole. When it came to Lee, Ash wanted it all.

The room was at the back of the house, and his first glance told Ash the view from the back was one he wanted to see as soon as possible because the ceiling wasn't flat but domed. Combined with the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the ocean, the effect was one of limitless space, but the room didn't feel exposed. It was a sanctuary tucked away at the top of a tower, and Ash walked in without intruding after all, because this wasn't Lee's space; it was theirs.

The walls were painted a golden color, clear and pure, shimmering where the sunlight touched it. The redecoration of the room wasn't complete. Ash could see where finishing touches were needed here and there, and the bed was a bare mattress with bedding stacked at its foot. Through a door he glimpsed a bathroom, and he walked over to glance at it, appreciating the way Lee had kept it in tune with the house without sacrificing comfort. The double shower was something he looked forward to trying with Lee, and the bath was huge.

He tested the water in the sink and was pleased that hot water was available. A flick of a switch confirmed that the power was on too, though that was less of a surprise.

Wandering back into the bedroom, he noticed photographs in frames on each of the wide, deep night tables and went to check them out. They were of him and Lee on set, their arms around each other's shoulders, smiling at the photographer. One had been taken a decade before, on the set of the original show, one was from the last day of shooting on the movie. Ash sat on the bed, propped the photographs against the pillows, still in plastic bags, and studied them. God, they'd been so young. Bright smiles, utter faith in their abilities and dazzling futures…but they looked happier in the second photograph.

Ash reached out and traced Lee's face, the younger Lee, knowing what was to come for him and hating that he'd been the one to damage that confident smile. They'd been given a second chance, but part of him still felt he didn't deserve it.

He replaced the photographs carefully, his eyes blurred with tears. Since the shooting, his emotions had been all over the place and the day had been stressful on every level. He stood, scrubbing impatiently at his eyes, and took a deep breath before going to take a long look out the window. Blue sky, blue water, green trees. Privacy and peace. Lee had clearly been planning this room as a surprise, working on it by himself with a slow, painstaking care. He had to get the hell out of it and do his best to look stunned when Lee showed it to him.

With a vague idea of exploring the woods around the house until the delivery truck left, he turned away from the view and saw Lee in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a quizzical look on his face.

"I'm sorry," Ash blurted out, guilt heating his face. "I didn't mean to come in here—well, I guess I meant to, I didn't know—"

"Hey," Lee said, straightening, a concerned frown creasing his forehead. "It's okay. Don't sweat it. I wanted you to see it when it was finished, but it's going to be your room too, so you should have a say in it. What do you think? Do you like the walls? That metallic paint is a fucking pain in the ass to put on, but it was worth every coat."

Ash opened his mouth to enthuse about the room, the house, how fucking edible Lee looked in scruffy, beat-up jeans and a sweat-damp T-shirt, then paused, suspicion flaring.

"You knew I was coming. No, you knew I was _here_. How?"

Lee snorted. "Ben told me. He had a vision of you crashing the car on the way over and thought he'd better warn me in case it was true. He sounded pretty worried."

"Of course he did," Ash said drily. "He needs me for the promotion publicity."

Lee rolled his eyes. "Ash, he likes you. Get it through your head. He was pleased with himself for playing Cupid, not that he needed to. We're okay, right?"

There was enough anxiety in Lee's voice to make Ash answer quickly. "Sure we are. Totally okay. But—"

"I've been here too much and treating you like you're fragile when you're a fit and healthy hunk of heroic manhood," Lee finished. "Yeah. Ben told me. There was something about me getting my head out of my ass as well."

"He didn't call me that," Ash said with conviction.

"Not using those exact words, no, but the sentiment was there." Lee sighed and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, looking as sheepish as Ash had ever seen him. "I admit it. I overreacted. Not to you getting shot, because that was fucking terrifying and I was entitled to freak out, but afterwards, when you were better. I couldn't accept that it was true and I'd gotten you back. It seemed too good to be true, so I thought it was. Not true, I mean. I couldn't get past the idea that you were still in danger."

"So you decided sex with you would finish me off? Hell of an ego you've got there, buddy."

"Or I haven't shown you how good I can make it for you," Lee said, a glint in his eyes saying he’d taken the dig as a challenge to up his game.

"Show me," Ash demanded. "Show me now."

Lee grimaced. "God, I'd love to, I would, but—"

"If you still think I'm going to break in two—"

"No," Lee said. "I don't. But there's a delivery man downstairs waiting for Rick to finish yelling at him so that he can unload his van—and by the way, it's Rick you can thank for telling me you'd arrived. He's a huge fan of yours—and the house is full of workmen. I don't mind paying them for the rest of the day and sending them home early, but I do mind them being around when we test out that bed."

"When you put it like that…" Ash gestured at the unmade bed. "Want me to make it while I wait?"

"Sure," Lee said. "The sheets need washing first—I hate how stiff they are when they've never been used—but what the hell. Okay, I'll make this as fast as I can, I swear."

He turned to go, and Ash cleared his throat meaningfully. "I don't get a kiss hello?"

Lee glanced back over his shoulder. "If you think I can kiss you once, then stop and walk away, you're wrong."

Ash made a sound in the back of his throat. He loved, fucking loved, knowing Lee was speaking the literal truth. It made him feel powerful and at the same time left him wanting to be on his knees in front of Lee, grateful and yearning.

"Not helping," Lee said tightly, clearly reading Ash's expression. "God, Ash, I've got to go downstairs and talk to people with a fucking hard-on I could use as a hammer now. Thanks a lot."

"Anytime, babe," Ash said, unrepentant and riding an exultant wave of sheer relief that it was all going so well and he’d get Lee back again, like before, only better. He'd have to send Ben flowers or something as a thank-you. "I still want that kiss, though, and I can take care of your problem in five minutes."

Lee looked tempted, something that didn't surprise Ash in the slightest. They'd always been able to turn each other on like a light, a word, a look, a touch, triggering encounters that had been notable for their speed and intensity. Ash had lost count of how many times he'd walked out of a room a few minutes after entering it, his legs shaky, his heart pounding, his dick still wet with cum when they'd been filming the series.

"Ash…" Lee came closer, one step, two. Ash didn't move. Let Lee come to him. Ash would do anything Lee wanted, but the weeks of denial demanded payback, and making Lee close the distance between them would do nicely.

Time for a carrot. Ash pulled a condom out of the back pocket of his jeans—he had a box of them in his overnight bag too—and a sachet of lube. He held them up between his finger and thumb for Lee to see. "Brought you a housewarming present. Want to unwrap this, try it on for size, and bend me over the counter in the bathroom?" He kept his voice calm, though he was starting to shake. "Fuck me from behind, Lee, so I can look in the mirror and see you watching me. Every time you slam into me, you'll be able to see what it does to me, and I won't hold back if you don't."

Lee licked his lips, his hands flexing as if they were already curled around Ash's hips, holding him in position, then glanced at the bed. "I wanted—"

"Romance, candles, the perfect setting?" Ash interrupted, tossing the condom and lube onto the bed. "That's what we have at work when we're shooting a scene. It's not us. Tonight, sure, we can take our time, make it last. I'd like that. Right now, though, I don't want to wait. Ten years of waiting and then that fucking bullet put us on pause again. I want you. Now. Fast and hard. Like always. I miss that. God, I've missed _you_."

Lee made a choked sound Ash had no problem interpreting, and finally walked forward, only stopping when he was in Ash's arms. His mouth found Ash's in a kiss that left Ash oblivious to everything but Lee. Every workman in the house could have walked in and he wouldn't have noticed or cared. Lee tasted hungry, aroused, the kiss messy, wet, perfect, all teeth and tongue. Ash ran his hands through Lee's hair, then cupped Lee's face, feeling the scratch of stubble against his palms and the warmth of Lee's skin.

"Get naked for me," Lee said, dragging his mouth away enough to be able to form the words. "Now. God _, now_ , Ash."

Dazed, desperate to get Lee's dick inside him, not pressing against him, Ash nodded jerkily and let go of Lee. They stripped without taking their eyes off each other, their breathing loud in the quiet room, Lee's chest rising and falling as if he'd been running.

Ash turned and walked into the bathroom, so focused and in the moment that his reflection in the large mirror on the wall seemed to belong to someone else. He had a moment to look at himself while Lee, still in the bedroom, was putting on the condom and dealing with opening the sachet of lube without getting it everywhere. He was unsmiling, his face flushed, and the body that he'd always kept in shape looked good.

His dick jutted up, dark red, his balls already tight and high. God, he was so ready for this after a kiss and the promise of Lee's dick deep in his ass, splitting him wide, filling him.

"You're such a fucking slut," he whispered to the man in the mirror, smiling now. He braced himself against the counter, the heels of his hands hard against the curved edge. His wrists would ache after this, but like the raw sting in his ass, it would keep the moment going.

Sex with Lee might often be frantic and rushed, but the afterglow lingered for fucking _hours_.

Ash moved back, glad there was plenty of room behind him so he could present the perfect picture for Lee, legs wide, ass up, his head hanging down for now, a toy waiting for its owner to wind him up, turn him on. He stared down at his dick and watched it twitch, the head glossed over and shiny. He didn't reach down to fondle it roughly and ease the ache. That was for Lee to do if he wanted to hear Ash whine, high and needy. If it'd been Lee bent over like this, Ash wouldn't have been able to resist that single caress. He'd have wanted to feel how hard Lee was, how hot for him, would have loved tightening his hand and moving it up and down once, a teasing stroke, delivered slowly or in a blurred second, over before Lee could gasp out a “please.”

Lee appeared behind him, and Ash spread his legs an inch wider, not because he needed to, but to let Lee see him do it.

"You drive me crazy when you're like this." Lee’s voice was unsteady at first but controlled by the time he'd finished. "You'd let me do anything to you if it got you what you wanted."

There wasn't much that Ash could say to that since it was the simple truth, so he shrugged, throwing in a wiggle of his ass at the same time because he knew Lee would be staring at it.

"So what do you want?" Lee asked. His hand came to rest on Ash's hip with a nudging push. Ash gave in, planted his feet firmly and allowed Lee to move his ass from side to side at will. He kept his gaze down for now and soaked in the feeling of being appraised. One of his fantasies, a fantasy he'd never shared with Lee, was of being part of a line of men, ass up and waiting for Lee to choose someone to fuck. Lee would move down the line, examining what was on offer, slapping a cheek here, pinching the leaking tip of a cock there, but always moving on.

Until he got to Ash. Ash closed his eyes, losing himself in the fantasy but taking the reality of Lee with him. Lee would—oh, he'd do what he was doing now. He'd touch Ash, humming approvingly as his hands explored the willing, waiting, wanton body displayed for him. He'd linger, dismissing the others, who would conveniently vanish, taking their disappointed sighs and hard-ons with them, and concentrate on Ash, parting his ass to insert a single finger or maybe a—

Lee's hand came down hard on Ash's ass, the slap startling him. It wasn't repeated, but Ash's cheek stung, hot and sweet. "You're not with me," Lee said, gently enough considering the slap. "I asked you a question. What do you want?"

"You," Ash said, made honest by lust. "Always been you. Always will be."

He expected to get a finger then or the push and grind of Lee's lube-slick cock opening him up without preparation, something Ash would pay for later but which made Lee's cock feel bigger, thicker, harder. Instead Lee bent over, his hands beside Ash's on the counter, and kissed the back of Ash's neck.

Ash moaned, goose bumps shivering over him as Lee brushed against his back and thighs, fleeting contacts, never enough. "God, Lee, please. Need you in me. Fast, remember? People waiting."

"They work for me. They can wait. And I don't want fast." Lee breathed against his ear, then bit the lobe, the sharp spike of pain sending a zing through Ash's nipples of all places, already pebble-hard and throbbing. Sexual acupuncture. "You said you could take anything I gave you. See if you can take slow."

Ash raised his head and met Lee's gaze in the mirror. Neither of them were smiling now. He shuddered and nodded, rewarded by another kiss, this one over his shoulder blade. Lee moved his mouth from place to place on Ash's back, kissing it, marking it with his teeth until Ash had to close his eyes. Lee's hands were over his, their fingers interlaced. It wasn't comfortable, but that didn't matter.

Lee kissed his way to the small of Ash's back and then paused, making Ash wonder why until realization hit.

Fuck, his scar. Ash had seen it in the mirror once since the stitches had come out, and hadn't looked again. Ugly, raw, it wasn't anything that he'd wanted to look at, and stupidly, he'd forgotten that positioned like this, in a bathroom full of sunlight, Lee had probably been staring at it the whole time.

Ash straightened, humiliation and panic replacing the warm haze of arousal, but Lee moved his hands, gripping Ash's hips and holding him down. "I'll let go if you tell me why you moved."

"My back," Ash said, the words tumbling out. "My fucking scar. I don't want you to see it. "

"This scar?" Lee said and moved one hand, placing it over the damaged skin. "The one I've seen a hundred times? The one I've dried off for you and put dressings on?"

"That's different," Ash snarled. "That wasn't when we were having sex."

"You're one tangled mess of hang-ups and issues, you know that?" Lee bent over, and Ash cried out as Lee’s tongue tracing the ragged shape the bullet had carved. "You got it saving my life, remember? It's part of you now. It's got a long way to go before it's faded, but you'll probably get it fixed up before then, anyway. Right now, it's one more bit of you that's mine and it doesn't turn me on or off. It's…there. Let me know when you've stopped emoting and I'll finish the foreplay and get to your favorite bit."

Ash shook his head, the wet tickle of Lee's tongue as he went back to lapping at the scar distracting him from whatever he'd been about to say. Lee always could bring him down to earth when he was flying too high to be safe. "I've stopped. Fuck me. Please."

Lee slid to his knees. "And I thought me rimming you was your favorite. Silly me."

Ash’s knees buckled, his insecurities driven out of him by the swirl and stab of Lee's tongue. He didn't always enjoy being rimmed—too self-conscious or scared that he didn't taste good—but the luscious, liquid sounds of Lee's mouth on him wiped out his doubts. The shallow intrusion of something so small and soft shouldn't have felt as mind-blowingly good as it did, but the elusive flicker of Lee's tongue sent jolts of ecstasy through him, addictive, tormenting. He gasped, open-mouthed whimpers escaping him, shamelessly pushing back, pleading for more. Lee obliged him for a few minutes, leaving Ash genuinely doubting his ability to remain on his feet, and then rocked back on his heels.

"If I don't fuck you soon, I'll come anyway, and that’s a waste."

Ash nodded blindly, his eyes screwed shut. He couldn't speak. Couldn't think. The muscles around his hole were flexing, fluttering, trying to hold on to nothing but air now. He needed fucking like he needed air. Blood pounded in his ears and sweat slicked his palms.

Lee got to his feet, with Ash tracking his movements by sound, and ran his thumb over Ash's wet hole, pushing inside without warning and drawing a grunt of pleasure from Ash.

"Ass up," Lee commanded, as if Ash hadn't been bent over for him for what felt like hours. "And open your eyes. You wanted to see me looking, remember? You close them and I stop."

"Control freak," Ash grumbled without heat and met Lee's gaze as lube trickled down to coat his hole, a cool slippery tickle of it. He could see his face and Lee's, but it still didn't feel as if the blond in the mirror was him. He knew that, yes, the blunt head of Lee's cock pushing inside him was why his reflection's face was contorting, the initial discomfort mellowing to a need for more, but it still didn't seem to connect to what his face was doing.

Lee tossed the empty sachet of lube on the counter, and Ash glanced at it, seeing it in sharp detail, the torn edge, the droplets clinging to it, before Lee's next thrust took his attention back to the mirror.

Lee reached around and ran lube-wet fingers across Ash's right nipple. It left the skin there cooler than the rest of his chest, the sensation distracting him from the moment that Lee drove in hard, his patience ended, then dropped his hand to circle and squeeze Ash's dick.

Ash was torn between pushing back onto Lee's cock and forward to fuck the tight circle of Lee's fingers. He groaned and tried to do both, his legs quivering with the strain of holding his position, his mouth dry.

"God, you feel so good, so fucking tight," Lee said, the words all but lost in the seashell roar in Ash's ears.

He'd wanted this without remembering how it felt. Any memories he'd jerked off to while Lee had been dealing with his stress by retreating to his refuge hadn't come close to the reality. He was here, in the moment, keenly aware of everything going on, the muttered, increasingly disjointed words from Lee, the slap of flesh on flesh, the clean scent of fresh paint fading to be replaced by the earthy musk of two men, sweating, fucking.

Their reflections were a blur now, but Ash didn't stop staring into the mirror as he came, with Lee, for once, right there with him, Lee's final, erratic thrusts prolonging Ash's orgasm to the point where it felt as if he'd been coming forever.

He couldn't feel his hands, and his arms were screaming at him to change position as loudly as his legs and back, but Ash was smiling as he felt Lee slowly, reluctantly pull out of him, grinning when he hit the floor in an inelegant sprawl.

_Relationship issues come to a head this month and you must hold true to your heart. It's down to you to choose a path in work as well as your romantic life. Opportunities to make money will come your way this month, especially after the fifteenth. This is a time when decisions you make will have long-term effects, but trust yourself and listen to what your inner voice tells you. Your lucky numbers are 4, 17, 22, 29, 36, 37, 42._

_Famous showbiz people born under this sign include Beyonce, Cameron Diaz, Colin Firth, and Ash Morden._

_September 2010 Horoscope for Virgo_

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lee lay beside Ash and watched him sleep. They'd kicked off the sheets during the sultry night so there was plenty to look at. The faint light of dawn brightened the room, gilding Ash's blond hair and burnishing his skin. Lee was under no illusions about Ash and never had been, but at moments like this he was struck by how good-looking Ash was. It was a beauty free of artifice and assistance, and every passing year added to it.

Lee studied the long, lean, muscular body, the perfect profile, the elegant hands, and sighed. He'd lied to Ash the day before. He fucking hated the scar slashed across Ash's back. He wasn't repulsed by it, as Ash had feared, but he couldn't look at it without being reminded of how close he'd been to losing Ash for a second time, in a way as final as it got.

It also made him angry. Personally, he didn't give a fuck if Ash wasn't perfect from head to toe, but he knew that it mattered to Ash, who could obsess over a pimple or a perceived sag under his chin for hours. He didn't know where Jones had been buried, but he felt like finding out so he could spit on his grave. Which was petty of him, but when it came to Ash, Lee had always been protective. In some ways, though Ash was the one who'd carried on working at the Dream Factory, living the life of a successful actor, wild parties, temptations, and excess all around him, Lee couldn't look at him without seeing the essential decency beneath the sophisticated, cynical exterior.

Ash was a nice guy. Who'd broken his heart in the past, yes, but Lee was in a forgiving mood these days.

"You're staring at me," Ash said without opening his eyes. "Am I drooling or something?"

Lee laughed. That was Ash all over. If he was issued a halo in heaven, he'd probably ask if it made his ears look big. "You made bed head look good, trust me."

Ash reached out, groping for Lee's hand and smiling when he found it. "Hi, there."

"Are you going to open your eyes?"

"Not until I'm sure this isn't a dream."

"Okay, that's way too much sugar before I've had coffee." Lee leaned over and bit Ash's ass. "Feel that?"

"Ow. Yes." Ash opened his eyes a slit. "God, I passed out on you, didn't I? Sorry."

Lee nodded. He'd been showing Ash around, giving him the official tour, when he'd realized Ash was pretty much dead on his feet, swaying with tiredness. Ash had ended up in bed at nine, protesting the ridiculously early hour, but halfheartedly, and he'd been asleep within minutes.

"You were exhausted. How are you feeling now? It’s early, so if you want to go back to sleep, go right ahead."

"I'm fine," Ash said, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes and yawning widely. "Feel great. Hungry. Sweaty. Need that coffee you mentioned and a shower, but other than that, I’m fine."

"Sorry it was so hot," Lee apologized. "I don't bother running the A/C in the day when people are coming in and out all the time, and it takes a while to cool the house down once it is on. It's bigger than you think. The house, I mean."

"It's not the only thing that's big," Ash said with a wriggle of his ass. "Jesus, I feel tender down there." A smile curved his lips. "If you're wondering if that's a complaint, it isn't."

"You wanted it, you got it," Lee said with a shrug. He'd been reasonably careful, and Ash could take it on the rough side. "Let me know when you're up for a repeat performance."

"Your turn." Ash moved to cover Lee, pinning him to the bed. Lee put up a token resistance, but Ash's weight on him felt too good to protest. He turned his head to the side and smiled when he saw the box of condoms and a bottle of lube on the bedside table. Ash had unpacked those the night before, placing them there with a pleased, mildly smug look on his face that'd made Lee grin and shake his head.

Ash opened him up with his fingers, a generous amount of lube, and a steady stream of dirty talk that Lee found cheesy and arousing in equal measure. Arousing won. By the time Ash was inside him, slow, measured thrusts that left Lee breathless with wanting more, Lee's dick was as hard as it could get.

"Gonna do this to you tonight," Ash panted, building up to a climax that would leave them unable to move for a while if Lee was any judge. "Gonna fuck you every chance I get, Lee. Every single fucking chance—"

Something about that left Lee wary, but Ash chose that moment to change the angle of his stroke and the resultant sparks distracted him when he tried to work out why. After they'd disentangled themselves and cleaned up in a cursory fashion since a shower was a necessity, Lee's mind went back to what Ash had said.

It didn’t take him long to guess what Ash wasn't telling him.

"You've been offered a part in something, haven't you?"

Ash had been leisurely kissing his way across Lee's neck, but that made him pause. "What?"

"You want to fuck me raw before you're not around to do it anymore."

Ash sighed and rolled to his back. “I intended to discuss it with you before I said yes or no."

"Why?" Lee asked, genuinely puzzled. "I'd never tell you not to take a part because I'd miss you. You're an actor, Ash; it's what you do. I'd like to be kept in the loop, though."

"You will be," Ash assured him. "This is something that came up when you were away, and I wanted to see the script before I committed to it."

"Uh-huh," Lee said, and let Ash see his cynicism. A job was a job, and scripts could change so much that they weren't a good way of picking a role. "Let me guess, they want you to play a gay guy?"

Ash laughed wryly. "You got it. My son's gay and he kills himself when I reject him. Guilt-stricken, I delve into his life and find out how much it appeals to me. There's this scene where I get off with someone and then find out it's my son's ex—pure drama. I kill myself in the end. Maybe. They're not sure if they want a more upbeat ending."

"Oh God." Lee didn't hold back a snicker. "You know, that plot sounds familiar."

Ash shrugged. "Since when did that matter? So what do you think? I don't want to get typecast."

"Oh, do it," Lee said. "What the hell." He raised his eyebrows. "Where is it set?"

"L.A., so of course they're filming it—"

"In Vancouver," Lee finished, his amusement fading. "I never did like repeats."

"Hold on," Ash said sharply, grabbing Lee's arm when Lee sat up and rising to go to his knees beside him. "This is nothing like last time. _Nothing_. If you want to go up there with me, you know you can. We'll find an apartment or get a hotel room. If you want to visit on weekends, that's fine too. The flight time's under three hours between LAX and Vancouver—it's not much different than the drive up here. Anything's fine so long as you're there when I come back." He let go of Lee's arm and moved his hand to cup Lee's face. "Babe? You'll be there?"

Lee cleared his throat, his heart hammering. Ash's expression was so fucking anxious. "Uh, Claudia says I've been offered a guest spot on a series that films up in Vancouver. Something about vampires. And there's a pilot too, though that's filming in L.A. I don't know if I want to do any of them, but if I do, I'm not going anywhere. Well, I might be, but—oh, you know what I mean."

Ash was smiling now, the sunrise smile that always made Lee's world a little brighter. "You mean that we're both back in the business, with two places to stay and plenty of traveling in our future, but whatever the hell happens, move over, Brangelina, here comes Ashlee?"

Lee hit him with a pillow for that one, but as happy endings went, it wasn't bad.

_EXT. BEACH_

_The camera zooms in on two men, sitting in the dunes as the sun sets over the ocean._

_YORK I never got it before. I thought I was wishing my life away, but I'm not. This_ is _my life. It's going to be exactly as long as it was always meant to be._

_DOLAN I guess. If you're fine with it, I am too._

_YORK What's wrong?_

_DOLAN [sighs] I lost Julie, I walked away from you for way too long… Now that I've got you back, I don't want to think about losing you. And I don't want to think about you and me tied together like this. [He forces a smile.] You're gonna make me stop eating burgers and start jogging, I know it._

_YORK [gently] Rob, forget it. I mean it. I did what I did to save you. No regrets, ever, but it doesn't mean I want you to change the way you live your life._

_York scoops up a handful of sand and tosses it out toward the ocean, where a breeze whips it away._

_YORK I didn't make a wish today. I didn't save any of the people who might have needed helping. I can't think of that as a day saved, but a day wasted._

_DOLAN And I can't see it as anything but another day I'll have with you, but it's not, is it? You can wish as often as you like now, because you'll die when I do, not before, not after. I can't live with that, Steve, with what saving me cost you. I love you, man. Hell, I'd die for you—[He laughs bitterly]—and if I did, it wouldn't help you one little bit, would it? How ironic is that?_

_YORK Rob, this…condition doesn't make any difference. When you die—and you will, we all do—I wouldn't want to go on without you. I can't._

_DOLAN [shocked] That's bullshit. You'd mourn me, sure, but you wouldn't want to stop doing what you're best at, helping people, making wishes. Steve, you can't mean that! Why would you say something— [He breaks off, shakes his head.]_

_YORK [starts to speak, then changes his mind] Let's go home and we can talk about this there. It's getting chilly._

_[Dolan nods and gets to his feet, begins to walk away, his head down. York hangs back, his gaze on the setting sun. We see the hourglass glow, and York traces its outline with his finger. He's in control now, sure of himself and his power. We see him glance at Dolan and smile wistfully.]_

_YORK I wish Rob would forget what I did to save him, what his death will do to me._

_[FX shot of the hourglass spinning]_

_YORK [whispers] Wish granted._

_Camera pulls back as he hurries to catch up with Dolan, the two of them walking away from the dying sun, into the night, toward the east, where the day will be born again. When York reaches Dolan, he slips his arm around him and Dolan turns to him, hugging him close. The camera pulls back until they're two small figures, two grains of sand on the beach._

_[FADE TO CREDITS]_

Chapter Twenty-Four

Samantha had been crying steadily for the last ten minutes, sniffling into a wad of tissues, choked noises escaping her. Ben patted her shoulder as the credits rolled.

"Dry ’em fast, sweetheart. Your name's about to appear as the inspiration for the movie."

She was too much his daughter not to suck the tears back into her eyeballs for long enough to see that, yes, the movie was dedicated to her, and then she went back to crying, stopping a minute later with a final shuddering breath.

"That was _perfect_ ," she declared.

"I wish the critics agreed," Ben said ruefully, aware Hourglass was getting panned by most of them, though a few had come out—ha!—and admitted to getting misty-eyed here and there. Ah, well. At least it wasn't being ignored, which was worse, and the sales were encouraging despite the reviews. He’d break even. Maybe make a profit, if it was only ten, fifteen million or so. "Still, I made it for you, so if you're happy…"

"Oh, I am, Daddy," she assured him. "I loved it. There's one thing, though.”

"Yeah?" Ben asked absently, anticipating a demand for a signed copy or two for her friends. "What?"

"In the sequel, we'll get to see them kiss, won't we?" Samantha frowned, her forehead creasing adorably. "Daddy? Are you okay? Did you swallow some popcorn the wrong way?"

_Sequel? Hell, no. Hell,_ no _._

"There’s got to be a sequel! I need to know what happens next!"

"They walked off into the sunset," Ben said, recovering from the shock and using his firm voice, the one no one argued with, not even Samantha. "They got a happy ending. Trust me, sweetheart, that's all she wrote."

The End


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